


We're Really Not the Golden Team

by RiaTheDreamer



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7386163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaTheDreamer/pseuds/RiaTheDreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grif counted himself among the most unlucky persons in the universe, if not the unluckiest. From the lack of supportive parents to the freaking one-man draft (and wasn’t that just an accomplishment in itself!), and now he was somehow the Captain of the Gold (ORANGE) Team.<br/>But Bitters had lost his family in the war and was now stuck with Grif as his Captain, so all in all Bitters was an honorable contestant in the Championship of Shitty Luck.<br/>So maybe Grif had no idea of how to lead a team. But to Grif’s defense, his team didn’t seem to have any idea of what they were doing either. It’s not that they weren’t trying. Grif had just come to the conclusion that none of them (including himself) were born to be soldiers.<br/>Too bad Kimball didn’t see that as a countable excuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bitters' Name Became a Pun

**Author's Note:**

> After becoming obsessed with RvB and fangirling too much over Grif, I finally decided to try to write my own fanfic. The story will not include any pairings (not that I am against such stories, in fact, there are some amazing ones out there), but will focus on Grif and Bitters and then Simmons will play a role too.  
> This is my first attempt at an RvB-fanfic, and just a heads-up: English isn’t my native language, so there will be grammar mistakes and typos I don’t catch. Otherwise I hope you enjoy the start of this story of friendship. Thank you for reading  
> The story is set after season 12, before season 13.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif slams the door, Bitters is late and Simmons won't give up.

Grif counted himself among the most unlucky persons in the universe, if not the unluckiest. Growing up with no father (survivable, especially since he’d probably be a dickhead anyway), his mother had run off with a circus (that kinda sucked, actually. Not like he’d ever work two jobs by his own choice, but, hey, life happens), then of course the one-man draft (that had to be a legitimate proof of his luck or lack of thereof – it was the opposite of winning the lottery, damnit), and then he had been stuck in a boxed canyon with a limited supply of Oreos, and now, somehow, he was stuck on a different planet (but not a canyon, at least – you had to point out the good things too) as a Captain (how did that happen again?) with (apparently) Sarge as his freaking symbol of leadership (now that was just sad. Really sad. Simmons had to be wrong, right?). But he had survived so far.

Bitters had lost his family in a pointless civil war (Felix’s fault – that dickhead), was now stuck in Gold Team (no, Orange! Fuck! ) with Matthews (kiss-ass) as his teammate and Grif as their Captain (not that he’d ever asked to be that, but when had anyone ever listened him? Never! That’s right!) All in all, Bitters was an honorable contestant in the Championship of Shitty Luck.

So maybe Grif had no idea of how to lead a team. Not that he cares (this isn’t the first time he’d failed at something, as Sarge surely would have pointed out), but now they were losing to Caboose’s team and that was just lame (not just because he was a (dirty) Blue, but come one, it’s Caboose, and even Grif has standards he wants to reach). To Grif’s defense, his team didn’t seem to have any idea of what they were doing either. It’s not that they weren’t trying.

Grif had just come to the conclusion that none of them (including himself) were born to be soldiers.

Too bad Kimball didn’t see that as a countable excuse.

* * *

Grif didn’t know about Bitters’ past because he cared. In fact, Grif had created a personality defined by not caring. The only reason he knew about it was because Simmons wouldn’t shut up and the information is thrown at him carelessly along with the daily insults and admonishments.

He had almost zoned out by this point, staring at his cupboard where his pack of cigarettes was hidden, all while ignoring Simmons’ speech, which was fair since he was talking bullshit, and the maroon soldier was too big of an idiot to realize it was bullshit which meant he wouldn’t shut up in the near future. Grif was planning to take a well-deserved break when his Lieutenant’s name was thrown into the speech of bullshit, and now Grif was actually paying attention to figure out whether Simmons was using dirty tricks or had just trailed off.

“-Bitters is probably going be there, too. I heard Jensen mention his loss of family members.”

That was probably something Grif should care about since Bitters was his Lieutenant and something about mutual trust and all that shit. But then again, when did he ever give a shit about something, even when he was supposed to? “So?”

“So that means you have, you know, moral support from your platoon.” Simmons was leaning against the wall, his visor hiding his expression, but Grif was sure he was looking too satisfied with himself. The maroon idiot probably thought he was coming up with clever arguments, when in reality, all he said was bullshit.

“Simmons, when have I ever needed moral support from my own team? I’m not sure if I know what it is or if I even like it.”

And of course Simmons had no sense of the situation and began one of his annoying explanations that no one wanted to hear anyways. “Moral support is encouragement or a show of approval-“

“Simmons. Shut up.” Grif was sitting on the edge of his bed, feeling that annoying bubble of anger that kept him from taking the easy way out of this conversation and just take a nap. Simmons had to realize just how stupid he was this time. “Look, I’m gonna take one of your endless advice and be selfless. I’ll let Bitters have all of Dr. Grey’s attention. See, I can share!”

“You’re going to prove that statement wrong the next time someone wants a taste from your food tray,” Simmons replied without missing a beat.

“That’s because I take a stance, Simmons,” Grif told him while pointed his thumb at himself. “My food is, surprise, my food. On the other hand, I have never craved alone time with Grey, so Bitters is all free to take that.”

“I’m just saying-“ Grif cut him off with an angry wave of his hand. “I know what you are saying and it’s all bullshit.” Simmons opened his mouth to retort, but his fellow soldier decided that now was the time to control the conversation to end it properly. “Simmons, why do you hate me?”

The way the maroon Captain pulled his head back in sudden confusion made the whole situation just a little bit better. “Huh… What?”

“I mean, we’d all get it if it was Sarge, but you, Simmons? I feel betrayed. I thought we’d decided that the best death for me was to die in my sleep, doing what I loved. But locking me in a room alone with Dr. Grey? That’s just pure torture and a painful death.”

Like every other time he was accused of something, Simmons started to stutter his way through an explanation to defend himself, until he decided it was a better idea to just shout at Grif. “It’s not… Look, I am trying to be caring, you asshole!”

“Oh God, is this that moral support you were talking about? ‘cause in that case, you can go shove it somewhere else. You know, to people who actually need it. Go get them killed instead.”

Simmons threw his arms out in frustration. “I am just saying that perhaps it will help.”

Grif crossed his arms in defiance. “I’d rather be stuck with a violent, trigger-happy, pissed-off Sarge-“

“Isn’t that just a regular Sarge?”

“-than offer my body and soul to Dr. Grey!” Grif finished shouting and his lungs already hated him from all that extra work. Being angry was not easy.

Simmons tried to rub his nose-bridge but the helmet came in the way. “And I’ll be sure to quote that the next time you need to go to the hospital. It’ll save us the medical bills.”

“Yeah, like that’ll happen. I’m not the one who keeps almost dying – that’s Donut.”

That earned a snort from Simmons. “Sure. You got run over by a tank, fell from a tower, got thrown off a cliff –“

“Look, if you want to complain about my near-death experiences, how about you ignore Sarge’s orders and stop shooting me in the fucking face!” Grif was scowling, but was pretty proud of his own argument that certainly proved how much bull Simmons was letting out.

Yep, that did it. Simmons’ voice went up that one pitch that revealed he was feeling guilty. “Hey, we haven’t done that in forever.”

“What a consolation, Simmons. Does this belong under moral support too? ‘cause that thing just becomes better and better!”

“Maybe Dr. Grey can work on that bitterness while she is at it.”

Some people just didn’t give up. Grif had learned the advantage of giving up long ago, and at the moment, he wished Simmons would get that revelation as well. “Simmons, I don’t need to go to fucking grief counseling with Dr. Grey to talk about my dead sister because I don’t fucking have a dead sister!” He got up, surprisingly fast but heck, he was angry and he should show it, but stopped in the doorway to throw over his shoulder, “And when Sister shows up, probably pregnant, I win the bet and you get to pay for the abortion she’ll probably be needing.”Then he slammed the door, but not before seeing Simmons slump forward in defeat, and suddenly even that stressful motion felt worth it.

But mistakes were made, and two seconds after the door was closed, Grif remembered his pack of cigarettes lying abandoned in his cupboard. That left him with two options. He could return to the room, ruining his dramatic exit and lose face (lose visor? Should it be called that?) to Simmons. Or, and this was the better idea, he could calm down with a snack instead of a cigarette. It was more than a satisfying replacement.

This type of bullshit was the reason why Grif kept his stash. He did not count it as emotional eating. This was just one of the balances of life. If you kept getting bullshit thrown at you (you know, like a fake war, crazy freelancers, a stupid stubborn Simmons and the list goes on), then you needed something to sweeten up life a bit. Like Oreos.

Or, more specifically, the pack of Oreos he had saved for a rainy day or something like that. It was kept among the rest of his stash which had been hidden strategically in one of the storage room, behind the box with manuals written in Spanish, because no one would look there since no one, except for Lopez, would ever read something in Spanish and Lopez did not need manuals. Grif was not sure why they even kept that box, but hey, if it could create a hiding place it did at least have a purpose.

But perhaps it was not best to find hiding place, Grif thought when he opened his stash and found that specific blue package that would be his salvation was gone. Of course he did not blame himself or the hiding spot (it was, in fact, the perfect spot that had taken forever to discover) because the true reason to this tragedy was obvious. It had happened before after all.

Grif’s eyes darkened behind the visor. “Bitters.”

* * *

Tracking down his Lieutenant with the least amount of work meant standing next to his assigned quarters because that was where his bed was placed and he would have to return to that eventually. Of course it was not as easy as expected since it had been half an hour since dinner had ended and still no signs of Bitters.

Grif’s mood grew worse when several members of his platoon returned, their cheerful banter turning into curious questions to which Grif replied he was busy with a private investigation, and still no signs of Bitters. He had missed dinner for this. Well, of course he had grabbed a couple of chicken wings to bring along on his mission, but he never joined his friends in the mess hall, but that actually did not bother him since he was still not sure if Simmons had dropped his stupid idea.

So when Bitters finally showed up (appearing from a different direction than the mess hall – just where had the idiot been?), Grif stood ready with his arms crossed. “Bitters, Bitters, Bitters. I really thought your weak stomach taught you the lesson the last time. I guess I was wrong.”

Apparently Bitters decided to try to play innocent as he stopped walking abruptly and took in the sight of his Captain standing watch with a slight tilt of his helmet. “Huh?”

“You know what you did, Bitters. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, still shame on you since that just makes you an asshole.”

Bitters was still just staring at him. “Yeah, I think I might have missed something.”

“You certainly did not miss special package of Oreos with extra stuffing! In fact you stole that one from my secret stash! I forgave you the last time, Bitters, but you are testing my patience! How could you do so?”

Bitters being Bitters took the accusation rather calmly. “Well, you never really moved your stash so it wasn’t really difficult.”

“Don’t you even dare trying to deny it!”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

Grif placed his hands on his hips, trying to stare down his Lieutenant which was proved difficult when the younger soldier was taller than him. “You ate my Oreos!”

Bitters shrugged, looking slightly to the left. “So?”

Grif could understand if Simmons or Donut or literally anyone else had trouble with understanding the severity of the situation. But this was Bitters and Bitters appreciated food. The orange Captain was literally sputtering from bewilderment. “So?!”

“It wasn’t really like you could eat it when you were dead.” There was a certain tone of bitterness to his voice that was just too much of a pun to belong to someone named Bitters. At least that was what Grif told himself when he felt uneasy at his Lieutenant’s strange outburst.

He could literally feel the impact of the blame being blame being thrown back at him. Grif stopped himself from staggering backwards and was happy he had his helmet to hide his baffled expression. But Bitters never continued his accusation and that left Grif to come up with some sort of response. “Yeah, but, huh, I was never dead so that isn’t an excuse.”

Bitters just stared at him, his visor revealing nothing.

“’sides,” Grif continued, “if I died, I sure as hell haven’t written you down in my will yet, Bitters. So my stuff is my stuff.”

“Sure.”

“I hope those sweet Oreos was worth this bitter, bitter betrayal.” Grif could feel the strength fade from his words as Bitters kept his blank visor focused on him. “So you owe me a new package.”

Bitters sighed , and he seemed more tired of the conversation than the actual punishment. “Fine.” Then came the awkward silence as the conversation had ended in a completely different direction than what Grif had prepared for. “Can I go to bed now or…?”

Well, Grif had run out of things to say and this was an opportunity to get out of a very awkward situation. Coughing slightly, he was about to step aside to realize just why going to bed now was a good idea. “Oh shit! We have early practice tomorrow!”

There came this strange noise from Bitters, like a balloon being emptied for air, as if he was holding back a sigh over his Captain’s obliviousness. “Uh-huh.”

“And we’re playing catch the flag,” Grif whined. The horrible realizations just kept coming. It had been thrown out during the day when he had focused on coming up with those clever replies to Simmons and his already busy mind had been happy to forget the problems of tomorrow. “Fuck.”

“Uh-huh,” Bitters agreed.

“Well then, Bitters, you better go and get prepared so we can win.”

“We’re not going to do that.”

No, they were not, and Grif knew that too. But he couldn’t really say that in front of one of the soldiers from his platoon. “Then we’re going to do better than last time. And that’s possible, Bitters, ‘cause I can’t come up with any ways we could have done worse than last time!” Grif really hoped that his words were true. Last time had been a fucking disaster, almost as bad as his own first round at Griffball, and he really did not want to imagine a scenario worse than that.

Bitters sighed again and moved forward to reach for the door which he kept looking straight at. He was clearly looking for a way out, too. Grif was suddenly not sure if this was a sign of whether his mood had grown worse or better. “Whatever you say.”

His tone made it clear he was not happy. So was that a problem Grif needed to take care of? He really hoped that was not the case. “Pretty sure there’s supposed to be a ‘sir’ at the end of that sentence, Bitters.”

“Sure,” the Lieutenant muttered and stepped inside his room.

“That’s not how you pronounce ‘sir’, Bitters!”

Grif managed to hear a grunt as an answer before the door slammed shut and Bitters was gone.

So there he stood, outside his Lieutenant’s room with no cigarettes and no Oreos and tomorrow his team was going to lose again. Life sucked.

But definitely not enough to see Dr. Grey.

* * *

“Where the hell have you been?!” So Simmons was still in the mood for shouting. At least it was not directly accusing – Grif recognized the tone as curious and then that tiny bit of worry that Simmons would deny if he asked him about it.

Of course Simmons had reason to be perplexed by Grif’s behavior. So they had finished their conversation earlier in an angry manner, but there was nothing new about that (having to share quarters (again) always led to arguments about cleaning or smoking or pronunciations or literally anything). But then Grif had missed dinner, which was a giant warning sign in itself, and when Simmons had convinced himself that his fellow Captain had returned to his bed for a nap the moment Simmons had left, he had entered his quarters and there had still been no sign of the orange soldier.

“Had to talk to Bitters.” Grif immediately started to take of his armor. He was too tired and grumpy to come up with any sort of lie, and now finally being close to his bed, it felt like it was calling out to him.

Simmons had scooted forwards on his bed so he could stare at Grif in wonder. He obviously thought he was about to win the argument they had been having earlier, and now he was surprised that Grif had been won over that easily. It was even more unsettling than his absence the hours before. “About the grie-?“

“Unless you are going to finish that sentence with ‘Grifball practice’, I don’t want to hear it,” Grif growled and threw himself on his bed. His armor lay as a mess on the floor, but Simmons had had that argument too many times and knew that his friend would not clean it up.

So the argument was still going on. Simmons ran a hand over his forehead and felt the change between his organic skin and his cold metal.

Grif was staring at the ceiling when he felt something land and bounce on the mattress next to his head. “Brought a pudding for you, fatass. In case you hadn’t eaten.”

“Like that would ever happen,” Grif snorted but had already peeled off the lid of his dessert. He sat there in silence, eating the treat while he thought about cigarettes and Oreos and flags and stupid Bitters’ stupid remark.

There was silence for a moment where Simmons tried to get a clear hold on the mood. Then he quietly asked, “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Grif threw the empty pudding package on the floor, rolling over on his side just to note the irritation in Simmons’ expression. “We’ve already talked, dumbass.”

“Oh.”

So they both lay on their bed, staring at the ceiling because that apparently was an interesting thing to do when looking at anything else was too weird. Simmons had turned off the light, preparing himself for a good night’s sleep so they could make sure their teams had woken up early too, because that was only fair.

As Simmons closed his eyes he could only hear the faint humming from his mechanical parts. At least that was until Grif called out quietly, “But, yeah, thanks, nerd.”

“Whatever, fatass.”

You know, all their arguments had at least taught Grif one thing. Being angry took too much effort. If he had to hold a grudge every time Simmons said something idiotic his back would break from the weight. Being bitter was easier. And it faded in the long run because no one could remain bitter for too long.

Right now Grif really hoped Bitters agreed on that theory.


	2. Raise the Flag!(We Surrender!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif does math, Bitters moves and Simmons is honestly disappointed.

Grif could easily define the pros and cons about catch the flag with his platoon. On the good side, he did not have to move. In fact, it felt rather good to give orders and then lean back to see it happen without even lifting a finger. The whole idea of this kind of practices was for the young students to improve. And of course for the Captains to practice their skills of actually being Captains, but all eyes were on the Lieutenants. So all Grif had to do was to come up with some tactics, try to teach them to his team and then find a comfortable chair and watch them work. 

The bad side? His team fucking sucked. 

So they had some skill. He had seen that whenever they had successfully raided the mess hall. But that had not happened since before they left to rescue the others.  Of course they had tried again when he returned (he missed the free extra meals) but apparently Bitters had become a fucking soothsayer because when he said “We’re going to get caught” that was exactly what had happened. After two failed attempts, his men had started to decline the offer free food since they did not want to get in more trouble. Cowards, the lot of them. Sure, they had fought Feds with no problem, but facing an annoyed Kimball was something that scared them?

He was obviously not their role-model. If he was then they would have learned not to give a shit about displeasing superiors. 

The worst thing about it all was that Grif had actually put work into this. Not that he would admit that, but his team really needed to win. So he had tried the strategies that had once worked when the mess hall had been their field, but for some reason it had not turned out well. Probably because no one had fucking tried to shoot them in the mess hall.

So Grif had tried to come up with the perfect plan, learning from previous mistake. Trying to explain it to his squad now made him realize it was not perfect. But it was a plan. Besides, it had been so damn hard trying to foolproof it from his soldiers’ mistakes. From dropping their weapons when the other team charged, taking his orders too literally (by ordering them to kick the other team’s asses, he had not meant that it was going to be melee combat, Matthews!) to forgetting or misunderstanding (he really hoped that was the case because if they were going against his orders on purpose, why was he even here?) his orders. 

“This is going to work.” 

“No, it’s not.” 

“Bitters, suck it up and get in position. You’re playing the special part in all of this.” 

And cue Matthews. “Sir, if Bitters isn’t satisfied with his role in this mission I would be more than happy to switch places.”

“No, Matthews, I need you out there, sacrificing your life for your team to create a distraction.” 

“You got it, sir!” 

So the idea was that Gold (fuck that! ORANGE!) Team was not the greatest team, and if the other teams had enough time, they would crush them. So they would not be given enough time. Orange Team (suck on that, Kimball) would rush forward, hope to take them by surprise, Matthews would hopefully die (and wouldn’t it be great if he could improve his death and take some opponents with him), and if everything went wrong, Bitters was the backup (yep, this was the perfect plan…).

So if the other team came too close to the orange flag, Bitters would jump from the cover he had been hiding behind the entire time. Grif saw this as an opportunity to go easy on the young soldier. He had literally been given the role where he did not have to move until the last final moment. Did he know how many times Grif had begged to be in such position? So now Bitters had absolutely no reason to be bitter.

“Great. Now go out there and don’t fuck it up.” His team consisted of 12 young soldiers, now also including some former Feds who kept glaring at him like he had lost his mind half of the time, who did not even try to straighten out their backs when they started jogging towards their given positions. So maybe they had realized the odds weren’t in their favor.

But that wasn’t really his fault. Tucker was apparently the symbol of a war hero (was that because Felix stabbed him? ‘cause Grif had survived getting run over by a tank and no one worshipped him for that. Except Matthews, but fuck Matthews.)  and being all that inspirational really rubbed off on the team. Simmons’ voice had stopped cracking _every time_ he talked, so at least they had improvement. Plus Simmons had all these strategies ready and his team actually listened to him. Caboose had Andersmith and wasn’t that just freaking unfair. His team was literally working by itself and the Blue did not even fucking realize or appreciate it. 

Grif had Bitters and while he could usually respect the maverick and his way of keeping his mind grounded, it was getting tiring to hear how they were going to lose each time. Not because he was wrong (Bitters had actually been right so far) but because the rest of the team listened to him and then there went all the enthusiasm that Grif could not give them. 

“Really? _‘Don’t fuck it up_ ’? That’s your plan?” As he was walking away from the training field, a maroon soldier suddenly appeared next to Grif.                                  

“Simmons, are you spying on me?” Grif asked accusingly. “Because that is breaking the rules and I had not expected that from you. That’s my kind of strategy.” 

“I know, which is why I am making sure you’re not doing it. And relax: you’re not facing my team, you’re going against Tucker’s.” 

“You cannot follow up on the word ‘relax’ with that sentence, Simmons!” 

“Just tell me you actually gave them a strategy this time.” 

“I do that every time, Simmons. Improvisation is just what happens when you have a team full of loose cannons. You can’t stop the creativity.” 

Simmons lifted a hand in disapproval. “Well, apparently you can if you use my Strategy G-O-L-D -04. Just like my team did the last time we won against you.” 

Grif could literally see the smug expression behind the visor. “We’re. Fucking. Orange.” 

“Technically you don’t even have a color.” They had entered the office above the training ground where they could watch with a better view of everything. The Blues were already there, and Tucker did not hesitate to reveal his presence. According to Grif, he had put way too much work into these exercises only because Dr. Grey had still not allowed him to fully take part of the Captains’ private training. The stab-wound was still not fully healed. “Simmons is bronze, Caboose is silver and I am all the gold, and the ladies know it.” 

“These aren’t even colors,” Simmons interrupted him and Grif thought this a really weak attempt to protect his fellow Red soldier’s honor. “Those are metals, idiot.” 

“I’ve always wanted to be a rock!” Caboose commented from the corner of the room where he was discussing strategies with Andersmith. Or, well, that meant Caboose was saying random things and then Andersmith would make strategies out of it, and, damn, why was Andersmith not on Gold Team? Well, he was a kiss-ass, but a kiss-ass that did all the work and never complained was tolerable. 

“No, Caboose. Rock can be fourth place. By some fucking miracle you’re second and silver.” 

“But, but, Tucker! I am blue.”

“Dude, that’s not how it works!” Tucker had turned his helmet towards Grif who was suspecting what was going to happen next. Dirty blue. “Gold Team hasn’t won a gold medal yet.” 

“Still fucking orange!”

“Well, today is a new chance,” Simmons the Diplomat added to the conversation. Grif figured he remembered the bad mood that he had caused yesterday. Well, you can’t blame a man for trying. 

Tucker seemed much more glad about this so-called chance. “Bring it on! Green Team is going to try out a new plan of attack. Point is to strike quickly before they even know it. Just in and out. Bow-chicka bow-wow.” 

Simmons let out a disgusted snort by the Blue soldier’s catch phrase. A bell rang, and Grif decided to step out of the argument by focusing on the two teams that had just started to move out. 

So Tucker was right about some things. Not everything ‘cause the man was clearly colorblind like the rest of the idiots. Not that there was anything wrong about being colorblind since Kai… Fuck. Grif shook his head to get out of his thoughts. But, you know, orange was not gold.

Still, the exercise was quickly over. 

Matthews was the first to go but that was no surprise. When the yellow-spotted soldier stepped right into the open and got shot down by two snipers, Grif even declared: “That was planned.” 

So his sacrifice revealed the location of the snipers and some members of the Gold Team actually managed to take them out. A fair trade. 

But then things went downhill. 

Green Team managed to jump four of Grif’s soldier who went down after a few seconds of firefight. Grif watched them fall with a grimace. “That was not planned.” Of course he knew they were not using real guns, but that would still hurt in the morning. 

“Do you have a backup plan?” Simmons asked as he came to stand next to him. From there they could see how Tucker’s soldiers were quickly advancing upon the Orange flag that no one was seemingly watching. 

Bitters was still behind his cover, invisible from even this angle. If anyone came too close, he had to perfect opportunity to shoot them. The element of surprise plus a good position. Still, Grif hated how much he had to count on one soldier. “Yep.” 

The rest of Gold Team was still trying to get to the other team’s flag but with no success so far. In the meantime, three of Tucker’s soldiers were going straight for the golden flag and there was no one to stop them. Well, except Bitters. 

Which was possible. If he just didn’t move and just stayed behind the cover like he had been told, they would not see him until it was too late, and then, hopefully, he could at least get one of them. They would still lose, but with some dignity. And, if the green soldiers had thought their victory too safe, they might let their guards down and a freaking miracle could happen. 

Except it didn’t. 

Instead Bitters suddenly left his cover and started to fucking run towards another rock that apparently looked much better from his point of view. But of course that plan did not work and he was shot down after running three steps. 

Simmons looked from the mess below them back to Grif who seemed to be in shock. “Was that your backup plan?” 

“Yep,” Grif answered flatly and watched as Tucker’s soldiers pick up his flag and run back to their own base where the rest of Grif’s men were getting killed one by one. He shouldn’t be surprised that he lost, but he had no fucking idea of why Bitters had ignored his simple order and instead literally run to his death. Like no idea. At all. “What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK?!” 

* * *

“WHAT THE FUCK, BITTERS?!” Grif yelled after the soldiers had picked themselves off the ground and were starting to brush off the dust from their armor. “I told you to stay behind cover! I literally told you to do nothing! That is the best order to be given and you misused it! Why the fuck did you move? We never move unless absolutely necessary!” 

Bitters did not even look ashamed with his decision. Idiot.

Grif placed his hands on his hips and tried to stare him down. When the situation felt familiar, he realized it was the same scene as yesterday. What the fuck. “How can you screw up doing nothing?! Even I have not accomplished that! Why did you do that?” 

“I didn’t think your idea was great,” the soldier finally explained. “It was actually pretty bad.” 

“Revealing your position in the last second is the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard, Bitters. Except Sarge’s emergency plans ‘cause they… No, fuck that, this was an even worse performance than me getting shot in the face. Bitters, when your Captain gives you an order you fucking follow it and don’t do the exact opposite like a good-for-nothing-!” His voice had already been raised to the maximum, Sarge’s insults ready on his tongue to be fired. But then Grif remembered he wasn’t Sarge and he would never be Sarge, even if that meant he could not shout at an idiot Bitters. 

But losing his temper was not the worst part of it all. 

No, that was the way Bitters’ helmet was turned slightly upwards, and in that horrible moment, Grif recognized the stance as one he had used plenty of times. Back in basic training he’d come up with the idea that if he sucked badly enough and if he showed enough disrespect they’d give up on him and send him home. It had probably worked in some way, as he ended up in freaking Blood Gulch as a sim trooper, but it was still a failed plan.

But he remembered standing like that, chin raised in defiance, while some apparently important big-helmeted douchebag who didn’t understand they Grif had not freaking volunteered to this bullshit was staring him down, shouting into his face. He had been unfaced by it all – heck, he had made a point of ignoring them as much as possible. Now Bitters was doing the same thing, and for some fucking reason, Grif was letting it get to him.

So Grif stood there, hand raised to scold his soldier but no words were leaving his mouth. 

And then things got worse (because of course they did) when Kimball’s voice suddenly called out from behind him, “Captain Grif, can I have a minute with you?” 

So someone was in trouble. It just wasn’t Bitters. “Just a minute,” he grumbled, his voice much lower than before. “Matthews!” One second later the soldier was in front of him, freaking saluting him. Kiss-ass. “That poem you wrote about my selfless sacrifice?”

“Do you finally want to hear it, sir?” Grif could literally see the soldier’s eyes widening with excitement behind the helmet. Oh god. 

“Recite it to Bitters. He needs to learn how to hear and remember what he is told, so make sure he learns it by memory.” 

“You got it, sir! We can perform it in unison tomorrow!” 

“Oh god no,” Bitters muttered with anger under his breath. 

Grif felt way too good about this punishment. “By memory, Bitters. All of you, dismissed.” As they began to disappear, Grif finally turned to face Kimball.

The leader of the New Republic gestured for him to follow. “Let’s go to my office.” 

He would rather not. In fact, what he wanted was a nap. But no one here would let him have that. Headaches, on the other hand, were given to him with too much generosity.

Of course they could not stay quiet the whole time, and Kimball began to speak as they walked down a hallway. “You are aware that I am supervising these kinds of training activities.” 

“Everybody’s watching,” Grif grumbled. “This sport is more popular than Grifball. Last thing I heard, some of the Feds established a gambling system. First time I’ve ever had someone put money on me.” Even though Kimball’s face was covered, Grif could sense her eyebrow being raised and continued, “You can bet on who’s going to lose. On the bright side, people have been bringing me extra meals as thanks. I’m making some people richer every time.”   

“I wouldn’t really call that a source of pride, Captain Grif.” 

“My list of accomplishments isn’t that long. I take what I can. So… How big trouble am I in?” 

“I am not here to scold you, Grif. I am here to address a problem.” 

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

Kimball sighed. “There is no denying that Gold Team is facing a setback. The latest results reveal as much.”

So Grif’s suspicions were proven right. This was a scolding. Much more gentle than Sarge’s, but a scolding none-the-less. “Look, my team should be happy. Whenever Red team screwed up Sarge’s training course, we’d have to practice our aim by taking shots at me. Sarge’s still convinced you use cones as target practice for the sole reason that they are orange.”

* * *

Somewhere at some point, Sarge shot down a cone. Walking closer to his fallen opponent, he looks down to study it. “Heh. Uncanny resemblance. Got the color and motoric skills of Grif. Can’t even tell the difference.” For good measure, he shot the cone again.

* * *

“Captain Grif.” Kimball’s stern but gentle voice shook him out of his thoughts. They had finally entered her office and the door closed behind them so he was officially stuck. “You and your fellow Captains accomplished your mission. You rescued your friends and you became a reason to fight onwards and harder to your squads. You did, however, not exactly follow my version of how to reach that goal.” 

“Because we ditched them and ‘died’? I can think of worse way a mission could go wrong than fake-dying. Like real-dying. That thing sucks.”

Kimball had sat down at her desk, hands folded in a way that meant she was serious. Grif grudgingly sat down in the chair in front of her. “Your men grew under the loss of their heroes. They fought bravely when we thought the battle was against the Federals. But now we know our real enemy and under your leadership they’ve improved even further.” 

“When you say ‘ _your leadership_ ’ you mean all four of us? Or am I even included?” 

“I’ve watched your platoon and there has been progress. What causes me to worry is that ever since Felix’s plot was revealed, the other teams have only grown better while these training exercise shows that Gold Team’s improvement has been on hold. They are not ready to be send into the battle that will come. I want my men to survive, Grif.” 

Grif imagined his men going up against Locus and Felix, and grimaced at the mental image. As if today had not been a disaster big enough. “And I don’t want a dead platoon. That’d be macabre. I… Fuck.” He hated these kinds of talks. He hated Kimball and her weird patience and expectations. He was used to C.O.’s yelling at him. He could handle that. But this whole trust-and-responsibly-thing was really not something that fit him. “Look, if you want a list with reasons why I am a shitty soldier I am sure Sarge has one lying around. I am not denying anything. I am a lazy fat excuse for a soldier. But guess what. I never asked to be one.” 

“Well, Captain Grif, in that case you have something in common with your men.” 

“Bitters is lazy but I don’t think he is fat-“ 

“They never asked to be a part of this war either,” Kimball finished softly, her visor set on him.

He avoided her glance with ease, staring at his own gauntlets instead. “Yeah… Life sucks.” 

“To be honest, Grif, I don’t think the problem is solely you.” 

“Well, that’s a first.” Truly. He tried to imagine this conversation with Sarge and realized he probably preferred Kimball’s weird confidence in him. But Sarge’s insults were much more familiar.

“There is obviously miscommunication between you and your team. That can be caused by lack of respect.” 

Problem was Kimball did not know him. Or she would have known that he did not like the r-word. “I don’t need them to respect me. I don’t want that. One Matthews is enough. I don’t work well with kiss-asses.” 

“On the contrary, from what I’ve heard you and Captain Simmons accomplish, I have to object to that claim.” Kimball’s voice was far too smug, like she had just proven her own point right.

“Well, we… Wait, did you just call Simmons a kiss-ass? What, did he send you a fruit-basket again?” Grif did not even try to sound ironic.

Kimball cleared her throat which meant he had was right. Shocker. “I… Well, it was a nice gesture.” 

Grif wished such an action from Simmons would surprise him but he knew his teammate too well. “And the occasion?”

“To celebrate the reunion between the New Re…” She seemed to realize he was changing subject and cleared her throat again in a sterner manner this time. “Your team must respect your orders, if nothing else. That requires trust.”

“I am not doing a fall-exercise if that’s what you’re suggesting. That would be a punishment plus I don’t think they actually have the strength to catch me and I am not risking my life like that.” 

“There has to be progress, Captain Grif, and soon. You must come up with a solution.” 

“Yeah…” Well, shit. “Right. I’ll talk to them or something.” Something included a lot of things so Grif could probably could that promise. “Give me a week and if they still suck I’ll fire myself. Just don’t give them to Sarge, they don’t deserve that.” Kimball had tilted her head in a manner that Gif recognized to be pity and he had to continue, “Look, I am pretty good at recognizing hopelessness when I see it. So yes, my team sucks and so do I. Maybe it can work out. I’ve survived things far too weird not to believe in miracles. But me becoming an efficient leader –that’s too much to ask for. I can try but… Look, I just don’t want them dead because I’m a shitty leader.” 

“I did not bring you here to ask you to step down, Grif. But I need to inform you that there must be made a solution.” 

If Grif had taken off his helmet, he would have run a hand through his hair. Instead, he sighed. “And if my solution is to give up?” 

“Then I can respect that.” Grif saw that as an ending to the conversation and left his chair. Before he could exit the room however, Kimball’s voice called out again, “But, Captain Grif, I think everyone would agree that there are solutions more preferable.” 

Grif gave her a short nod and left. So today was even worse than yesterday. He stopped for a moment in the middle of the hallway and closed his eyes. Kimball was too comfortable being a leader. Look at how much confidence she had in him. Well, perhaps he would have respected that confidence more if she had actually been able to name those preferable solutions. 

He would have to speak to Simmons about this. The maroon soldier was probably already way too curious about what Kimball had wanted to say to him. But first a snack. He did not want to argue with Simmons again and so he needed his stash to brighten up his day. 

Grif sincerely hoped Bitters had left it alone this time.

* * *

“Simmons, I am going to speak to you in a language you understand,” Grif announced when he entered their shared room. There was a sort of laid-back excitement in his voice that covered his frustration. The tone caused Simmons to be both curious and wary.

“Oh God, are you referring to the time you got drunk and started speaking Hawaiian? Let’s not go there again.” Simmons snorted with a grimace as the memories came back to him. Back in Valhalla, Grif had somehow gotten his hands of a strong bottle of something (there had been nothing left for Simmons to investigate) and Simmons had returned to his quarters to find Grif sitting on the floor, mumbling what to Simmons’ ears was nonsense.  The only word somewhat understandable to him was Kai, and he knew better than to ask further into that.  

“Where would I even find alcohol anyway?” Grif snorted dismissively, but in truth, he really wanted the answer to that question. “They got those bottles locked up tighter than the frozen pizzas, and trust me, I know. No, Simmons, I am here to start a conversation in the language of math.” 

“Ah, the only true universal language. It’s so beautiful,” Simmons sighed dreamily, falling into his own thoughts. Grif could almost see calculators inside hearts flying around the maroon soldier’s head. Then Simmons blinked (though you could not see that through the visor). “I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming, aren’t I? Should I be worried? Wait – let me hear what you’re going to say first. I have a feeling you’re going to crush my dreams with the first sentence.” 

“It’s simple math, Simmons. I can figure that out.” 

“Sure,” Simmons snorted and his tone revealed his expectations of his friend. 

So maybe normally he would be right, but Grif was aware of his own abilities, even the ones he didn’t show since it would require effort, and so Grif found it in his duty to defend himself with a raised middle-finger. “Fuck you, and tell me I’m wrong when I say that negative times negative equals positive.” 

Simmons had already leaned forward, a hand raised to gesture just how Grif was wrong, when the realization hit him. “That… Oh. My. God. You’re right. You’re actually right. I must be having a heatstroke. Grif, were you actually listening in school?” 

“You’re fine, moron, and if you’re asking if I once won a math quiz when I knew the teacher was handing out a free ice cream to the winner, then the answer is yes.”  

That earned him another snort. “That I can believe. Alright, you are getting my hopes up. Where are you going with this?” 

“I sure am not here to join your nerd club, Simmons. I am here with a practical problem.” Grif had expected Simmons to be excited to have such a conversation (and the maroon soldier claimed Grif never did anything to keep up the good mood the quarters, but here was yet again an evidence of how Simmons was wrong), but the maroon idiot was more suspicious than happy about the whole thing.

“About math?” 

Grif nodded, his helmet bobbing up and down. “So if negative and negative equals positive, then why is it that my laziness and Bitters’ laziness won’t end up in something productive that Kimball likes?” He had begun to pace back and forth, and at the end of his sentence, he threw out his arms in open frustration.

“I knew it. I knew your stupidness would show eventually.” Simmons’ voice had this weird tone to it – a mix between being satisfied as his expectations were proven right and being honestly disappointed that it was the case. “You’re not multiplying shit, dumbass. You are adding laziness to your own massive amount of laziness. You are literally stockpiling laziness.”

“Okay, smartass.” Grif had given up pacing back and forth and planted himself on his bed. Simmons saw this as a sign of the enthusiasm leaving his body, which meant he had given up his mathematical theories, which was probably safer for everyone. What was that next? Donut talking about sports (excluding criticizing cheerleaders, if that could even count in that category)? “If you know everything, then tell me why Bitters is pissed at me!” 

Having a conversation about Grif’s fuckups was a much more normal (if not daily) thing to do, and Simmons could deal with that. In fact, he was almost an expert. Letting out a short sigh, he straightened out his back and prepared himself for the worst. “What did you do?” 

“You’re supposed to tell me what I did!” Grif had taken off his helmet, running a freckled hand through his mess of a hair. “If Bitters is working against me, then he is pissed. You don’t do a thing which includes the word ‘work’ without a good reason.” 

“Well, I don’t know what you did! You’re supposed to keep track on your own fuckups.”

Grif had opened his mouth to retort when he realized that the conversation was going nowhere. At all. Next step was talking to Donut which would also get him nowhere but with mental imagines he could have avoided. “Why am I even talking to you about team-problems? You can’t even talk to your own platoon!” 

“Sure I can! How else do you think I’m winning, dumbass?” Simmons defended himself, starting out with a point he had proven right the last time they had played catch the flag. “Ever since we established ground rules for hand signals, we’ve improved our chance of victory by 72 percent!” 

“Wait, that’s what you were doing? I thought you were practicing some mockery of a hula dance!” Grif remembered seeing Simmons in the distance flailing his arms around like an idiot. Back then, he had actually thought it had served as some sort of distraction.

Simmons’ normally pale cheek went slightly red beneath the helmet. “Oh, shut up! At least I communicate better with my troop than you do apparently!” 

“So that’s your advice? Hand signal to Bitters? ‘cause the only signal I know is this.” Grif flipped him the finger. “And that is probably all I need in this world!”

“You go ahead and do that, Grif,” Simmons sighed and took off his helmet to rub his nose-bridge. “I’m sure that will solve all your problems.” 

The orange soldier shrugged. “It’s worked so far.” 

“So this is what you talked to Kimball about?” Simmons asked genuinely curious. “What did she tell you to do?” 

“Find a solution.” 

“And so you started treating it like a math problem. And then you went to me.” 

Grif narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what Simmons meant with that. Was he calling him stupid? “And you’re giving me nothing, so fuck that strategy.” 

“Don’t you have any idea of your own? This is your problem after all, idiot.” 

“Well, I have a backup plan,” Grif revealed, looking away from Simmons to set his eyes upon the doorway. His sudden entrance had not closed the door behind him, and he wanted to make sure that no one would walk past their quarters and overhear their conversation. “I can always give up.” 

Simmons rolled his eyes. “You say that to everything.” When the other soldier did not retort, the cyborg frowned. “Wait, are you serious? You can’t do that!”

“Why not? It seems to be the best solution. I’m a bad leader, surprise, and my squad fucking sucks. And if they still suck when we clash with Felix and Locus, they’re gonna end up dead.” 

Simmons tried not to look worried. He was already connecting this to the argument he had started yesterday. This was just another reason why Grif should see Dr. Grey. This was still about his sister, even if the moron did not realize it. Simmons had noted a change in his behavior when Grif had got stuck with the responsibility for young, eager soldiers – much like Kai. And there was a big chance that they would die – just like Kai. But of course he could not mention this connection or Grif would freak out on him – just like yesterday. “That’s why we’re training them, dumbass. To make them ready for the fight.” 

“Yeah, but my squad is becoming less ready for each exercise! It’s like the opposite of improvement! Unprovement!”

“That’s not a real word.” 

“Doesn’t matter! Thing is, Simmons, that I won’t just get my men killed. I’m not fucking Tucker!” 

“Ooh, are we playing that game again? Because in that case, I want to marry Caboose! Private Biscuit,” Donut chuckled as he suddenly appeared in the doorway – because of course this was his cue to appear, “- good times.” Donut tilted his head with a hand on his chin in wonder. “I’d probably kill Church. That guy never just die. I’d just wait for him to come, and then everyone would be happy.” 

Simmons grimaced at the mental pictures, while Grif started scolding him, “I told you living with Doc wouldn’t bring you any good, Donut! You’re not a fucking pacifist! In fact, we’re in the middle of a war right now – just not with the Blues, even if Sarge still hasn’t realized that.” 

“So who would you fuck?! Wait, no! I really don’t want to hear the answer to that. And we’re not even playing that game.” 

“If you are not playing the game, then I must say that’s a pretty impetuous suggestion you just came with, Simmons. Sarge won’t be happy if you heard you talk about fraternizing with the Blues.” 

“Oh my god, Donut! We’re talking about Grif’s poor leadership! He has no idea of what to do with his squad and Bitters isn’t happy about it.” 

 “I know how you can satisfy Bitters!” 

Of course he did. Grif closed his eyes and grimaced. As Donut and Simmons started a conversation about how to confront his team, Grif zoned about because they had no idea of what they were talking about. He really should have gone for a smoke instead.

But, well, mistakes were made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this turned out longer than I expected. I hope you like it. The jokes are stealing away my creativity. I hope the next chapter will be ready soon, but I have nothing written for that scene yet, so it might take some time. Thank you for the support!


	3. Losing Visor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif smokes, Bitters is quiet and Simmons tries to eat.

Taking a smoke automatically meant spending some time alone since Simmons would pounce on him if he saw him with a cigarette in his hand. The cyborg had managed to throw away three of his packs before Grif realized he could not have them lying around visibly. To actually smoke them required a distance from the cyborg so he could not tell him about his chances of getting cancer. Because that was the most dangerous thing in the middle of a war.

While he had almost perfected the skill of smoking inside his helmet (which was indeed a skill and should be appreciated), he used these moments alone to take off his helmet and actually feel air on his face. It was always warm and humid on Chorus, but the heat did not manage to match the one of Hawaii where the air would be salty and he could feel sand underneath his feet.

It had been easier to find a hiding place back in the New Republic’s base where he had normally walked all the way to the cliffs behind some of the main buildings. No one would look here, it had pretty much been deserted, and he had been able to sit in the shade and take a break from life. The place had reminded him of Blood Gulch and that brought mixed feelings. A fake war always sucked, but at least the Blues had been a lot less dangerous than Felix and Locus. It was a really bad sign when life in Blood Gulch seemed easier than their current situation. 

But now he was in Armonia and there were people everywhere. Wash was probably going to make them run laps later, so Grif had found no motivation to wander around the city forever and exhaust his legs, so he had settled on a bridge connecting two buildings. No one had bothered him yet and he could enjoy his cigarette in fresh air and silence.

As Grif blew smoke out of his mouth he thought about his talk with Kimball. He was satisfied with his current solution – wait a week and see what had happened. Postponing bad stuff was always an acceptable solution. 

“Captain Grif!”

Grif should be surprised that the Lieutenants had managed to find him, but due to his shitty luck the last couple of days, he barely raised an eyebrow. He did not even turn his head away from the view blow him, but did give a half-hearted salute to Jensen when her voice broke the silence.

As the sound of footsteps became louder and louder, Grif slowly blew out a cloud of smoke. He had to enjoy it while it lasted because this was Jensen and that meant Simmons with no doubt had complained to her about his lungs.

“I don’t think Captain Simmons would be happy to see you smoke, sir.”  There it was, and it was almost without a lisp.

“Well, Jensen, unlike you I don’t have to please Simmons. I am a free man who is currently enjoying his smoke in peace and quiet. So don’t ruin that and don’t tell Simmons,” he added quickly in the end. No need to get the cyborg started again.

“Spoken like a free man,” someone snickered and Grif recognized the voice. The sound of footsteps had indicated that Jensen had not been alone but now he wondered just how big a crowd he had gathered. 

“Shut the fuck up, Palomo. Why I’m I even forced to be listening to you right now?” Truly, he had not expected any of the Lieutenants to find him. He turned his face to the right to see no less than three of them – Jensen, Palomo and, surprisingly, Bitters. “What the fuck are you three doing here?”

Palomo shifted to let his rifle lean more comfortable against his shoulder. “We’re returning from a patrol since it’s lunch time and– HOLY FUCK WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?!” 

Grif was about to sigh, but Bitters beat him to it. “Real smooth, Palomo,” he said and Grif could almost imagine him rolling his eyes in disgrace.

Okay, so this conversation had begun. Just great. It was a whole other reason to why he preferred smoking in solitude. It was not like he made a point out of hiding his face – he just preferred to keep his helmet on. It saved him stupid questions and stupider comments. But his scars required an explanation, preferable a brief one, and so Grif used his thumb to point at his own face. “This is the result of hard work, kids, so stay away from that.”

This meant the official end of his smoke break. Good thing he had a lunch break to move onto. Grif put his helmet back on and started walking towards the mess hall. Sadly, it did not rid him of his followers and Palomo kept staring like an idiot at his face as if he could see the scars beneath the helmet. Grif even quickened up his pace but the Lieutenants were hot on his heels. At least Matthews was not present.

Jensen, copying Simmons by being a smartass, pointed out, “I thought this was the result of not moving, sir.” At least she did not sound smug about it. She continued, “Captain Simmons told us about the tank-accident.”

“Uh, I haven’t heard about that! Do tell!” Palomo sounded way too excited about the story of how one of their Captains became gravely wounded (weren’t they supposed to worship them? Shouldn’t this be equivalent of a horror story?) and was almost prancing as he went down the halls with his fellow soldiers.

Both Palomo and Bitters had turned their heads towards Jensen whose lisp and stuttering returned under the sudden attention. “Well, Captain Grif was in a tank-accident,” she began, twiddling her thumbs, and paused before continuing, “I don’t really know more.” 

“I see he hasn’t spared you any details,” Grif muttered dryly. While he knew Simmons was not the greatest storyteller (his version of how they took down the Meta was just lame. No sense of drama.), he had expected him to actually explain his appearance to his squad. It was not like the cyborg had anything to be ashamed of – from what he had gathered from the platoons’ bickering, the girls actually found the metal parts attractive. Two shades of skin only earned him strange looks.

Jensen had tilted her head and placed a finger on the lower part of her helmet. She was obviously thinking about something which was a bad sign. “But it must be the same accident where the Captain was turned into a cyborg,” she concluded after connecting the dots.

“Holy fuck, what did I miss? This is better than a comic book!”  As they came closer to the mess hall, Palomo’s excited outburst earned them glances from soldiers wandering down the same hallway.

“I think it was something about Private Donut tricking Capta-“ Before Jensen could end her sentence, Grif cut her off with an angry wave of his hand.

“Hey, if you’re going to tell the story, get it fucking right. I heroically saved Donut – not because I like him but because he has the best chance of communicating with Lopez and no way am I learning Spanish– by pushing him out of harm’s way. Then came the tank and along there somewhere Simmons lost some organs, I gained some, and the whole surgery was a bloody mess with a fax machine thrown into it at some point. Want details, ask Sarge, but save yourself that horror story.” 

“Wait, who drove the tank?” Palomo asked out loud as if he did not catch from the tone of Grif’s voice that the story had been told and there was no need to go more into it. But this was Palomo and of course he did not catch that.

“How the hell should I know?! I was a bit busy being almost killed.” 

“It just seems like one of the things you should notice before death,” Palomo pointed out as they entered the mess hall. “So you could swear eternal vengeance.”

There were so many wrong things Grif wanted to point out about that statement. First of all, eternal vengeance didn’t really work when you’re dead. Secondly, when something is eternal it meant too much work.

However, before he could say anything, Palomo decided to share his thoughts – again. “Do you think it was Captain Tucker? It would be awesome if it was Tucker.”

“How? How would that be awesome, Palomo?” It was not that he had not wondered. In fact, it was one of the things that could keep him up at night. Those what-if-questions and scenarios of how things could have turned out differently. If he had run with Donut or if Sarge had actually been logical and had put the cyborg parts inside of him. But if he was honest, then perhaps it was best if he did not know who had driven the tank that day. On the bad days when his donated limbs ached and he avoided mirrors like a plague, it was probably better that he only had fate to curse instead of a name.

“Then you could have a face-off with him. Punch him in the face for destroying yours! The ultimate revenge!”

So that was on the list of things that Grif was not planning to do.

Jensen cleared her throat, hopefully swallowing her spit without choking on it, and said, “Well, we can find out right now. There’s Captain Caboose.” And sure enough, the blue armored solder was standing by himself next to a trashcan, a food tray in his hands, and by the looks of it, Grif guessed that Wash or Tucker had (probably purposefully)left him behind or told him to stay put. But he seemed happy when the four soldiers walked over to him – Grif being pulled along by an excited Jensen who now saw herself as the detective who could solve this mystery.  “Captain Caboose!” 

“Yes!” He turned around to face them like a dog reacting to its name being called out. From the corner of his eye, Grif could see today’s dish (Taco Tuesday – fuck yes!) being served to the soldiers of Chorus, and now he wondered what the hell he was doing in the opposite end of the mess hall.

Jensen straightened out her back, obviously feeling the pressure of now having two (oh, goodness!) captains in her near presence. “We were just wondering if you might have run over Grif with a tank?” 

Even though Jensen had asked the question in the gentlest way possible, Caboose pulled his head back and defended himself with a strained voice as if he was in a court hall. “Wha-ah, no, no that couldn’t have been me. Could have been the tank’s fault.” He lowered his voice into a dramatic whisper. “It was very angry.” 

“So you didn’t harm anyone with a tank?” Palomo kept pushing on, hands behind his back, and oh my god, was he crossing his fingers for Tucker being the driver? Bitters was standing behind him, arms crossed and looking slightly away as if he did not want to be there. Grif looked down and saw that his own body was stuck in the same position. He immediately let his arms fall to the side.

Caboose was quiet, apparently in deep thoughts, before he quickly said, “It was a very dangerous tank.” When they all turned to stare at him, confused if this was a confession, he waited a moment before adding: “Tucker did it.” 

Grif, knowing Caboose’s habit of pushing all accusations onto his fellow Blue soldier, resisted the urge to facepalm. “That’s great, Caboose. Thank you for your answers,” he said with a strained voice, trying not to let the other soldier hear the sigh he let out.

“You are very welcome!”

Grif literally grabbed the Lieutenants by the arm and dragged them away from Caboose and towards the food instead. “This has been a very productive lunch break. Next time let’s ask Tucker for relationship advice. That might be even more informative than this.” Truly, the talk with Caboose had gotten them nowhere, since accusing Tucker literally meant it was Caboose’s fault, but the blue soldier had a way too complicated history with the tank for them to even understand which accident he was talking about. Grif looked down at the Lieutenants and wondered why they had not let go of the subject yet. “Aren’t you supposed to be elsewhere? Bitters, you’re supposed to do poetry with Matthews.” 

That earned a sigh from Bitters who had actually been remarkable quiet in the conversation so far. “I thought that was a cruel joke.” 

“Do I look like I’m kidding, Bitters?” 

“You’re wearing a helmet,” the Lieutenant pointed out without missing a beat.

“Of course I am since you guys couldn’t handle my face!” Well, actually it was Palomo who had freaked out, and then Jensen had been way too curious. Bitters had not seemed to give a shit, and that was one of the reasons why Grif had liked his Lieutenant until the training exercise this morning where he had pissed him of.

“About that… So you’re like part Simmons?” 

“That sounds wrong on so many levels, Palomo.” Really, that just created horrible mental images that would take forever to get out of his head. Plus, it sounded like he was some sort of dog breed whose ancestor was a Dutch-Irish nerd.

“But Captain Simmons did give up his organs to save you?”

So Jensen did have a point. But when she put it like that it sounded way too much of an emotional sacrifice, and everyone should know that touchy feel-shit was not discussed on the Red Team. “I wouldn’t put it like that…” 

“That doesn’t seem physical possible,” Bitters pointed out, an echo of the exact same words that Grif had told Sarge so many years ago.

“A lot of things doesn’t seem physical possible,” Grif shrugged him off. “For example, how come someone as annoying as Palomo hasn’t been shot yet?

“You’re the one to talk, Grif.” Simmons appeared from out of nowhere, a food tray in his hands and a smug tone in his voice.  

“Once again you’re wrong, Simmons.” Grif shook his head as he went over to collect his own lunch. “I _have_ been shot. I just survived because the universe needs me.” 

“Or thanks to the range of Sarge’s shotgun,” Simmons muttered under his breath which Grif chose to ignore. He picked up his tacos and found his place next to his Red teammate as they tried to find a free table, preferable in the corner of the hall.

But some people never gave up and Palomo caught up with them. With a tilted head, he tried to stare through Simmons’ helmet. “Is it true you’re a cyborg?” This caused Simmons to look at him in a puzzled manner (as puzzled as you can look with a helmet) and the Lieutenant tried to make the conversation more formal and failed miserably. “Captain? Sir?” 

Now Simmons had the full attention of all the Lieutenants and he was cracking under the pressure. “Wha- Grif, why have you been talking about my face?!” he ended up shouting at his friend in a high-pitched voice.

“Technically, I got half your face,” Grif defended himself.

“Grif!” 

“Not my choice of conversation. These idiots saw my face and-“ 

And immediately the warning bells started ringing in Simmons’ head. He knew how his orange armored friend felt about the surgery scars. It had never been a big secret, but Grif liked to keep his helmet on when he was around other people than those from the Red team. It was another reason why they normally ate in the corner of the mess hall. Besides, after they had revealed Felix, both the rebels and the Feds had begun to stare at them even more, and Simmons enjoyed a bit of privacy as well. “Wait, how did they see your-? Grif, were you smoking again?!” 

“Wha – how dare you accuse me of such things?” Now it was Grif’s turn to turn high-pitched.  

Simmons, knowing his friend too well, obviously did not believe him. Instead, he turned towards his Lieutenant. “Jensen, was he smoking?” 

And Jensen saluted him. “Yes, sir!” 

“Jensen, no one likes a snitch!” Grif scolded her. As he turned to face her, he noticed Bitters who was standing quietly behind her. “Do they, Bitters?” 

“So, I’m not going to be a part of this argument.” 

On the other hand, Simmons was ready to shout at the orange Captain. “Grif, I told you not to ruin my lungs!”

Grif was about to shout back (he even had his arguments ready, but it wasn’t like Simmons had not heard them before), but Palomo suddenly jumped in front of them. “So it is true?! I was about to think it was all a lie.” 

“Really, Palomo? Just why would my face then look like Frankenstein?” 

“I don’t know. Bad mole-removal?”

“You must know who drove the tank, sir!” Jensen told her Captain. “We asked Captain Caboose but his answer was… unclear.” 

“He might have tried to cover up the guilt,” Palomo suggested dramatically. “Creating a fog of confusion to cloud our minds!”

Grif knew Simmons well enough to know that he was rolling his eyes beneath the helmet. “That wouldn’t be necessary since it was Tucker who drove the tank,” Simmons said and revealed the culprit in the least dramatic way ever.

“Wait, Tucker actually did it?!” Grif was honestly surprised. This had to be a first. “I had not seen that coming.” 

“Oh, this is great!” Palomo squealed, and while the group had managed to reach the corner of the mess hall, that also meant they found a Blue Captain sitting alone at their usual table. Caboose was obviously still lost in the other end of the room, and Wash was probably discussing the current Chorus-situation with Carolina and Kimball. Palomo was immediately at his Captain’s side. “Captain Tucker, Captain Tucker!”

Tucker was obviously not happy for the company. “Go away, Palomo!”

Ignoring orders, Palomo gleefully gave him the news: “Captain Grif is going to punch you, sir, to defend his dignity!”

Some seconds passed where Tucker tried to get past his confusion to understand what he had just been told. Though he still found it unbelievable, he eventually smirked at Grif.” Oh, this is going to be good.”

Grif had crossed his arms and was happy that his helmet could hide his expression. Wash had spent way too many private lessons with Tucker for Grif to take him on. He did not need his ass kicked even more than it already was. “I never said that.”

And thankfully Simmons came to his rescue. “Don’t worry, Grif, you don’t even have a dignity to protect.”

Tucker seemed to be enjoying the situation way too much. Forgetting all about his lunch, he folded his hands and looked at Grif. “So are we doing this now or we saving it for the training hall? More of an audience here, but if I can bring my sword when we spare, I’d be willing to wait for my victory.”

Grif knew he had to protect his dignity at some point (this was a Blue after all, and he had to fight for Red Team’s pride, right?) and told him, “Like I’d you give that satisfactory, Blue. If I ever raise my fist, it’s to bring this taco closer to my mouth.”

To emphasis his point, he sat down in front of Tucker and prepared himself to be able to focus on his lunch instead of the stupid conversation. Simmons sat down next to him, removing his helmet before placing it on the table. Grif had been about to take off his own as well when the maroon helmet appeared next to his tray and suddenly he realized the horror of the situation. To be able to eat he needed to remove his helmet, and he couldn’t do that when Palomo was around. The last thing he needed was more comments.

It turned out that the comments came anyways. They just were not directed at him. Instead, Palomo had sat down in front of Simmons and was shamefully staring at his face. “That is so awesome!” he finally breathed out, and Grif could not help but feel a little pang of bitterness since that comment was much better than what he had received. “Can I take a picture?”

Simmons stopped chewing when he realized that everyone was staring at him. His skin did not change color, but Grif figured he was both blushing and going pale from the attention on the same time.

Tucker seemed even less impressed and raised an eyebrow at Palomo who normally adored his own Captain. “What is this? Worship-the-Reds-day? Going to ask them for an autograph next?” 

Grif really hoped Palomo did not take that literally. “Get in line behind Matthews. He’s going to need company since he’ll be in that queue forever.”

But Palomo’s full attention was now directed at Simmons who still had his mouth full with uneaten taco. The Lieutenant whistled to gain his attention and watched in awe how Simmons’ robotic eye flickered towards him. His robotic eye that always shines with green light adjusted its size before as it focused on Palomo who looked like he was ready to rip his own face off to gain a false eye as well.  “That is epic.”

“So hot!” Jensen piped from behind them and then coughed to cover it up. Grif watched as the blood was drained from Simmons’ face.

“Can you shoot lasers too?” Palomo kept asking. “Is it like a laser face?”

“Dude, this is Simmons, not Church,” Tucker told him and rolled his eyes. 

“Huh?” Palomo looked truly confused and Grif realized his Captain had not told him that story yet. Great. More storytelling to come.

But now he just really wanted to eat and that meant the Lieutenants had to leave. “Look, mystery solved. Tucker is the jerkhead. Now go away.”

“Did you do it on purpose?” Palomo tilted his head towards Tucker as he asked, and Grif promised himself that he was going to kill him if he asked another goddamn question.

Tucker never had the chance to answer as Simmons snorted loudly. “That is the worst part of it all. It was an accident.” 

Grif deadpanned beneath his helmet. “Do the crushed organs not make it to the top of that list?! How is that the worst part?!”

“Because the enemy didn’t even try to kill you, asshole. You were just too lazy to move out of their way. It’s partly your own fault. And Sarge still complains about how you couldn’t even kill him properly.” Simmons ended his sentence with a sour look towards Tucker. Though he never spoke it out loud, Grif knew he too wished that the Blue soldier had never stepped inside the tank.

“We’re all complaining,” Grif grumbled. “Last time you ever get to drive a tank, Blue. I’m officially the driver for both teams.”

“It’s probably for the best,” Simmons agreed with him. “I don’t have any organs left to spare.”

“So when you saved his life,” Palomo says in this strange tone that made Grif fear of how he would end this question, “did you give him your heart too?

Simmons’ eyes briefly flickered towards Grif before he stared down Palomo. “Don’t make it weird.”

Now it was Tucker’s turn to snort. “We’re talking about cyborgs and Frankensteins monsters. I think we passed weird a long time ago and stepped right into crazy.”

Jensen piped up again: “It’s like best friends necklaces! Just with body parts!” Both Grif and Simmons grimaced at that mental image. For a brief moment, Grif could almost see Simmons standing with an intestine around his neck, a heart tangled into it in the middle.

Simmons had not looked this pale since the time Donut had offered to oil his mechanic parts. “Oh god, let’s end this conversation.”

Grif could not agree more. “I’ve been saying that for the last fifteen minutes! You get them to shut up!”

In that beautiful moment could see the gears (those mental ones inside his head, not the actual ones inside his torso) spin inside Simmons as he thought about a solution. Finally (and this could not have happened a moment too soon) he said, “Palomo, did you know Tucker was once pregnant.” 

“You-!“ Tucker choked on his taco as he realized what Simmons was trying to do.

Unfortunately for him and fortunately for the Red soldiers, he was too late to stop it and Palomo leaned closer to him. “Is that true? Do tell!” 

“That doesn’t seem physical possible,” Jensen pointed out, and this was all going way to well. Grif could not be more grateful for Simmons’ stroke of genius.

“Let’s not do this again,” Bitters sighed but remained with his friends.

Simmons saw their chance to escape and picked up his helmet with one hand and dragged Grif out of hearing range with the other. “That was pure genius,” his friend praised him. “Let’s run. No, I forgot my tacos. Never mind, we leave them and run. They’re not worth this.” 

“What? No! Bitters is right there,” Simmons said in a low voice and nodded towards the Lieutenant who was surrounding poor Tucker with his friends.

“Yeah, Captain Obvious. I’ve been trying to get rid of him!”

“And you suck at it. But this is your chance to fix whatever happened between you two.” 

“Because it’s that easy,” Grif snorted but Simmons was not giving up. He had only dragged Grif away to make sure he would finally confront Bitters. Nothing would happen if they did not talk about it, and Simmons would not deal with a sour Grif for the rest of the week. 

“Just pull him aside for a talk. Ask him about it.” 

Grif put his hands on hips. “So I’m inviting him on a date? In that case, I hope you have flowers I can use ‘cause I forgot to bring any!” His voice was literally dripping with sarcasm.

“You’re becoming so insecure!” Simmons scolded him and hoped he did not sound like Donut. “You can’t even eat in the mess hall now because you’re attached to your helmet!” That was a real problem and they both knew it.

“They are staring at me weirdly.” Grif’s voice sounded strange, like he could not figure out whether he had to defend himself or if he was trying to sound like he did not care. Simmons reminded himself on adding that to things he could talk with Dr. Grey about (if he ever mange to convince him) but knew this really was not the time to say it out loud.

“Get used to it. At least your eye doesn’t start blinking like a disco-ball whenever you’re low on oil.” 

“My oil levels are pretty stable, thank you.” Grif knew Simmons was not happy with the result of the surgery either (and who could blame him?), and his tone became a bit more soft as he added, “But, yeah, Sarge really should have put a laser in there.”

Simmons sighed heavily. “It would have been cool, wouldn’t it?”

“Would have saved us some trouble later on.” Grif tried to imagine Simmons killing the Meta with nothing but his eyeball. “But wouldn’t you melt your helmet each time you tried?”

“That would be a… You’re changing subject. Stop being a coward and talk to him!” Simmons turned his friend around by his shoulders and literally pushed him back to their dining table.

“Says the hand-signal-douche,” Grif muttered under his breath.

He was not even struggling against Simmons but he was not helping either, and considering it was quite some weight that Simmons had push, the maroon solder began to pant and said through clenched teeth, “I’m not letting you get fired! It would ruin the Red Team’s reputation and no way am I picking up your men.” 

“Oh, you and Matthews would get along perfectly! Take him.” Grif was really grateful that Matthews was not present (that was probably the only way this lunch break could be worse than it already was). Then he sighed and began to walk normally alongside Simmons who was happy to let his arms relax. “Who am I kidding, I can’t leave my tacos behind!” 

And so they returned to the table where Tucker was still stuck and looking like he was about to shoot himself. Palomo was sitting next to him, talking his ear off, and Jensen had taken the seat that Simmons had left. When Simmons and Grif came close enough, she looked up and greeted them politely. “Did you forget anything, sir?”

 “Captain Tucker just finished telling his story about how an alien knocked him up,” Palomo exclaimed as happily as if he had been told he had been promoted.

“That’s not how I described it, Palomo!” Tucker snarled at him before setting his visor upon Simmons. “I hate you.” 

“This has been the most entertaining story time ever! I’m going to spend all my lunch breaks with you guys!” Palomo tried to put a friendly hand on Tucker’s shoulder but it was immediately shrugged off.

“You did this.” Tucker was still glaring daggers at Simmons as he obviously remembered who had mentioned the pregnancy to begin with.

Simmons did not notice this but was instead busy looking in all directions as he searched for a certain Lieutenant. “Wait, Bitters left?”

“He went to find Matthews, sir,” Jensen loyally told them. “Something about a punishment that he described, and I quote, as a ‘pain in the ass’ and ‘sucked big time’.” 

Grif nodded in recognition. “That would be time spent with Matthews.”

“Well, at least he is following some orders, Grif,” Simmons pointed out. He knew about the creative punishment that Bitters had been given and perhaps this was the Lieutenant’s first step towards earning forgiveness for the mistake he made this morning. “Maybe he isn’t as angry as you think.”

“I’m going to murder him,” Grif suddenly growled. 

Simmons had not expected Grif to suddenly sound this mad and turned his head towards him in surprise. “Huh?” 

“He stole my tacos!” Grif shrieked and pointed down towards his tray that was evidently empty.

This time Simmons had to admit that he had been wrong. Bitters was definitely not trying to make things easier for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter, I realized I share far too many traits with Palomo. Oh gosh.  
> Also, this story was first meant to be a collection of one-shots, but then it eventually turned into a story with a plot. Due to having my own surgery scars, I have wanted to write a scene about reactions to Grif’s face for far too long.  
> And I am sorry for the delay. Summer’s been busy. Unfortunately, that won’t change, so it will take at least two weeks, if not more, before the next chapter is ready.


	4. Ctr+F+U

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif takes a stance, Bitters hits something and Simmons has a plan.

"It’s not like you can avoid him forever,” Jensen told him with a hand on his shoulder, but Bitters angrily shrugged it off. To avoid eye-contact, he lifted his sniper rifle to aim, effectively covering his visor.

They were currently standing in the outdoor training facilities on a platform with a perfect view to the target cones in the distance. While this served as an excellence opportunity for the Lieutenants to train their sniping skills, it also gave them a chance to talk in private away from prying ears. Behind them, fellow soldiers were training as well, but the platform created distance. Not that Bitters was especially chatty today, but the same could not be said about the other Lieutenants.

While Bitters missed his shot, the cone next to his own fell. Andersmith reloaded his rifle. “Stealing from your Captain is a serious crime, Bitters. It would be wise to face Captain Grif and apologize.”

“Apologize to us first!” Palomo had not even picked up his rifle that was leaning against the fence just like its owner. This was their own private exercise – or, well, it was supposed to be an exercise – and therefore their Captains were not there to supervise it.

Jensen tilted her head as she stared at him in wonder. “Why?”

“Because he didn’t share the tacos!”

“Quit whining, Palomo!” Bitters growled as he took aim again. When his mind was overcrowded with thoughts, the cones seemed invincible to his bullets, and he wondered if he would have been able to suck even worse if his Captain was there.

“He does have a point,” Andersmith said to everyone’s surprise, but then he followed it up with: “Five tacos is way too much for any respectable soldier’s diet.”

“Not if you ask Grif,” Bitters retorted flatly as he missed again.

“I thought the whole point was not to listen to Captain Grif,” Jensen pointed out with a smug lisp – something Bitters had not known existed. Bitters gave her a dark glance through his helmet before turning his focus on the far-away cones.

 “She isn’t wrong. I’m surprised Captain hasn’t replaced you with Private Matthews yet.”

“That’s because Matthew’s a kissass,” Bitters told Andersmith with a sigh because this was obviously a well-known fact.

“So isn’t that a major flaw in your plan?” Palomo asked as he turned away from the edge he had been looking down from. There had been a rumor that the rest of Simmons’ squad would be outside as well, and that meant a good view from where the Lieutenants were standing. “Technically, if you want Grif to hate you, you have to suck up to him.”

While Palomo may have had a point, Bitters still had his dignity. “I’m not doing that.”

“See, this is where I’m confused whether you’re pissed at Grif or just hoarding food.”

“Palomo, I’m going to shoot you.”

Jensen touched his shoulder again. “Bitters, food hoarding is a serious eating disorder. Have you considered touching the subject with Dr. Grey?”

It was at times like this that Bitters wondered why he kept hanging around with them. He could miss his cones from every other place then here. While Jensen had meant well the time she had suggested the grief counselling, Bitters still had nightmares about Dr. Grey’s wild laughter and he was still unsure why the last half an hour of the meeting had involved mentions of shattered kneecaps. “I’m not – Look, I’m not talking with her again, and I’m not hoarding food. I’m _eating_ it.”

“Yeah, that’s called emotional eating, and you should probably get help for that too,” Jensen told him gravely. “You could be a real example for Captain Grif.  Captain Simmons has been trying to get him see Dr. Grey the entire last week.”

“ _Why_ do you know things like that?” Bitters had never suspected that Jensen would be the type of person to read other people’s diaries, but this amount of knowledge about her Captain and his friends confused him.

“Well, Captain Simmons has a tendency to complain out loud whenever Captain Grif has disagreed with him.”

Palomo tore his glance away from Jensen’s butt to nod. “Tucker always lets us know whenever Agent Washington makes him run extra laps. Which is like every day. I’m sure they’re gonna marry someday.”

“I don’t know about that. But Captain Caboose daily tells us the story of how he courageously saved his best friend’s life. He understands how to set an example and improve morale among his troops.”

Jensen put a finger on the lower part of her helmet. “It seems like the Captains generally spend most of the time just standing around talking. Though, sometimes also under fire.”

“Talking during combat is a perfect strategy to distract the enemy, Jensen,” Andersmith pointed out as he took aim and hit his target.

With a tilted head, Palomo turned towards Bitters. “Doesn’t Grif ever share stupid stuff with you?” He seemed honestly disappointed on his behalf.

Bitters hesitated with a finger on his trigger. While Grif did talk during their sessions – mostly complaining, actually, often about something Simmons or Wash had ordered him to do – he did not let them into his private life. Now when he thought about it, Bitters had no idea why Simmons wanted his Captain to see Dr. Grey. Not that he minded. It was none of his business anyway. “I’m normally not listening.”

“Again, I’m still unable to understand why Captain Grif rejected Matthews.”

“Not everyone can be a kissass,” Bitters muttered in Andersmith’s direction. “Some of us have dignity.”

“I just still don’t understand why you are still mad at them. They did come back.” Jensen seemed really focused on talking about their Captains while Bitters really just wanted to stare at the cones, and if his friends were actually silent for a moment, he might actually hit one.

“Whatever. I don’t care.”

“You seem like you care.” Bitters’ grip on the rifle tightened as Jensen did not shut up.

“Can’t you just keep quiet and let me concentrate?” he growled out of the corner of his mouth. To his surprise, they all shut up. Bitters shifted, unsure if this counted as support from his teammates, and the sudden attention to his aiming skills was almost more annoying than their chatter before.

He held his breath and pulled the trigger.

He missed.

Behind him, Palomo giggled.

“Palomo, I swear I’ll –“

“You can talk to us about it,” Jensen cut in again, and she was almost as bad as Dr. Grey. “We’re your friends, right?”

“’Friends’ is a strong word,” Bitters muttered.

“And this obviously bothers you.”

“Jensen, knock it off,” he tried for one last time, and reloaded his rifle with a stiff and angry motion.

“Nah, she seems to be right. You look really aggravated,” Palomo told him as he leaned closer, taking a look of his face, well, visor.

“I wonder why,” Bitters muttered slowly under his breath. He then quickly took a step away from the Lieutenant of the Green Team.

Palomo immediately started to talk again, “Am I the only one who thinks it’s kinda funny?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the case, Palomo.” Andersmith leaned back in confusion as he did not follow Palomo’s thoughts which was not really that surprising.

“Your name is Bitters.”

Under his helmet, he rolled his eyes. “I really hadn’t noticed.”

“And you’re quite the douche when you’re bitter,” Palomo concluded happily, as if he just invented a new joke.

“Am I supposed to be laughing?”

“You should probably buy him a package of Oreos before you try to talk to him again,” Jensen suggested, and, hey, the subject is back to the Captains again. “Captain Simmons usually brings him peace offering gifts after an argument.”

“We should probably come with you. Comfort eaters shouldn’t be left alone with food.”

Bitters turned to stare at Palomo, wishing he had the laser eyes that the Lieutenant had suggested yesterday. “ _You_ shouldn’t be left alone with _me_.”

“So is that a joke or a threat? Is your mood worse or are you smiling behind your helmet?”

“I don’t think he is smiling,”Andersmith sighed over Palomo’s obliviousness, and Bitters wondered if the he would actually hang out with the rest of them had they not been fellow Lieutenants.

“I wouldn’t be either,” Palomo said in a serious tone. “Grif swore he was going to kill you for eating his food. Hey, can I make the speech at your funeral?!”

He sounded a bit too happy about that idea, and Bitters immediately began to destroy his dream. “I don’t have to worry about Grif ‘cause we don’t have any lessons with the Captains today so I won’t see him.”

“Shouldn’t you be practicing poetry with Matthews?” Palomo suddenly asked, as if he had first noticed his presence now.

“Palomo-“ Bitters’ voice was wavering in a growl. The last five minutes of dialogue had worn out his patience and a headache was growing quickly inside his skull. His grip on the rifle tightened as he mentally swore that he was one sentence away from punching him in the face.

“I can help.” Palomo cleared his throat before he started rhyming: “‘ _My name is Bitters and I’m a real quitter. Except when I steal food, because then I’m actually good. My Captain has an ass I won’t kiss, but there’s a problem even bigger ‘cause each time I pull the trigger at shooting practice I miss.”_

He was not sure if it was the mix between the rhymes or the insults or just the annoying voice, but Bitters lost it. He spun, arms flailing, around to yell in his so-called friend’s face. “PALOMO!” Unfortunately for all individuals currently present in the area, Bitters’ expressed his anger by clenching his fists, and in his blind fury, he forgot his hand was holding a rifle. He accidently pressed the trigger in the completely opposite direction of the cones.

“OWW! WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Bitters had not realized his mistake before the voice shrieked out in the mix between pain and shock. Underneath his helmet, the Lieutenant paled.

Next to him, Andersmith turned his head towards him and said gravely, “I think you will be seeing Captain Grif pretty soon.”

“HOLY FUCK YOU SHOT HIM!” Palomo was not as calm as Andersmith.

Neither was Jensen. “Guys, shouldn’t we do something?” she asked nervously, fiddling her thumbs in worry – for Grif or themselves, Bitters wasn’t sure.

“YOU ACTUALLY HIT SOMETHING!” Palomo exclaimed again, sounding even more shocked.

Bitters’ head was lowered as he stared at his own hands. “Fuck,” he finally said, summarizing the situation pretty well.

Palomo was still freaking out, but lowered his voice into a strangled shout that intentionally only was meant for his friends to hear: “We have to hide the body!”

“I don’t think he’s dead.” Jensen was pointing at the commotion in the distance, where people were crowded too much together for them to actually spot Grif, but they were pretty sure it would have been worse if they had actually killed him. Plus Bitters was pretty sure the muffled yells of pain and frustration belonged to his Captain. “We should probably get down there and-“

Jensen was cut off by someone yelling at the top of the lungs: “SNIPER!”

The Lieutenants saw a guard pointing towards them and by instinct they all drop to the ground in case the security suddenly began to shoot at them. They were not sure if it was the best idea, but on the other hand it would be pretty foolish to stand there, waving like a Queen after shooting his own Captain.

Next to his crouched body, Palomo had covered his helmet with his hands. “We’re innocent! It was self-defense!”

“Palomo!” Bitters yelled since his friend was technically admitting to a crime. But this wasn’t a crime, right? This was an accident, and those things happened, and they could not be punished, right?

“He was mentally unstable at the time of the crime!”

“PALOMO!”

The Lieutenant of the Green Team finally stopped screaming, and instead he turned his head to stare at Bitters whom he asked, sounding pretty offended: “You really don’t like people helping you, huh?”

* * *

“I told you,” Simmons announced proudly as he stood next to his seated friend. “I told you, you were going to need medical treatment again.”

In his wheelchair, Grif grumbled: “Sound a little bit more happy about it, would you, Simmons?”

“I’d personally have aimed a little higher,” Sarge cut in, his shotgun over his shoulder, as he looked Grif over. For a moment, it felt like the end of a training exercise where they evaluated the young soldiers’ result. “Grif uses his legs far too little for this wound to cause the maximum pain. Shoot both his arms and he wouldn’t be able to stuff his mouth. Starving while bleeding to death seems a fair punishment for his poor excuse for a life.”

Grif was too tired, irritated and high on painkillers to feel truly offended or scared. Besides, this was Sarge, and no one had expected him to tell him to get well soon in a kind manner. In fact, the only reason why his Sergeant actually showed up in his room in the infirmary would be to humiliate him or finish the job. So instead Grif asked with honest curiosity: “Why not just shoot me in the head and get it over with?”

“And end the fun too early? Why do you think you’re still alive, dirtbag?”

“You know, I’ve been asking myself that for years,” Grif muttered and this seemed to be a reasonable explanation to why Sarge had not killed him yet. He was sure they had all wondered why that had not happened yet.

“At least now we can use you as a moving target,” Sarge muttered under his breath and cocked his shotgun. “Look forward to tomorrow’s training course, son,” he then told him in a tone that made Grif decide he would not show up to that training session.

Sarge was about to kick his wheelchair to see how fast a target he could be, when Dr. Grey appeared in the doorway. He immediately put his leg back down and straightened out his back. Everyone in the room (perhaps with Caboose as the exception) knew better than to mess up the Doctor’s work just after she had patched up her patient.  “Oh, he will be out of that soon. You might not even have needed the chair had you not fallen when the bullet hit. That is a real nasty sprain. It’s funny how most you guys’ injuries seem to be self-caused.” She laughed briefly before disappearing down the hall.

“Yeah, real funny,” Tucker snickered with no humor in his voice. “You’d expect Caboose to cause them.”

“Wrong, Tucker,” Church said as he appeared on Tucker’s shoulder. His arms were crossed. “Grif is clearly still alive. But the day’s still young.”

“I would like to point out that it is very possible to shoot your own back,” Caboose told everyone but no one seemed to hear him.

Grif was not sure if he had been lucky or unlucky. On one hand, he was still alive (but that was something he had said to every situation in his life so far, so it was probably a bad argument at this point), but on the other hand he had returned from running laps with Simmons (“Be an example for your men, Grif! How can you expect them to do their best when you won’t even take part of your own exercise?”) who of course had suggested they should run without their armor on (‘Why should we need armor? We are in the center of the city, no one could attack us, the armor only slows us down and it would be healthy for your skin and confidence to let the body breathe for a while. Why should we wear armor here?’ – THIS IS FUCKING WHY!) when a bullet had pierced his thigh out of fucking nowhere.

Simmons told him he should be happy that it had hit his own original leg and not the donated one, but it still had its complications. Mainly because Grif had been so surprised that he had fallen over by the shock, twisting his ankle to the point where the limb was considered useless. Normally Dr. Grey would have given him a crutch after patching him up the best she could and ordering him to give it some rest, but the one functional leg he had left was the one Simmons had given him. While they had both (surprisingly) survived Sarge’s surgeries, the Red Team’s leader was not exactly a skilled surgeon. Grif’s donated leg often ached or gave out on him, and Dr. Grey had decided it was not the best idea to let it be the sole support for the rest of the body. Therefore; the wheelchair. Grif had not complained. Crutches required motion – a wheelchair was something someone else could move for him.

Church was glowing on Tucker’s shoulder. “No way Tucker’s even slightly capable of being a suspect. This attack was caused by a sniper rifle.”

“Fuck those, dude. I still have a badass sword.” Tucker crossed his arms and turned to look at Grif. “But you’re out of luck. Bitters is becoming the new Caboose.”

Grif was already pretty pale after the ordeal, but now he was whining: “Oh god, no. Let me die with some dignity.”

“Hey, my death – totally honorable,” Church told him sternly.

Grif narrowed his eyes. “Which one?”

Church had opened his little mouth to answer but then Caboose left his corner to ask happily: “Are we playing that game again? ‘cause in that case I want to be Church!” His body stiffened and he lowered his voice into what he believed was an impression of his so-called best friend’s. “Look at me! I am Church! I am little and angry and Caboose is my best friend! I melt things with my laser eyes!”

They all watched him walk around in circles for a while, muttering quotes they were pretty sure Church had never said. The AI turned towards the soldier in the wheelchair. “Yeah, you’re fucked.”

“At least you still have your leg,” Tucker pointed out. After yesterday’s talk in the mess hall, it seemed like a thing to be grateful about.

“I once lost a pinky toe,” Caboose told them all gravely.  “I miss it.”

“You should miss the functional side of your brain more. That was a loss,” Tucker muttered and Caboose turned to look at him as if he had no idea of what he was talking about.

Before that could become another argument, Donut entered the room, and Grif was not sure if he should feel grateful or not. “Oh, Grif! I heard about your accident.”

“Wasn’t an accident,” Church said with a smug voice. “Apparently, annoying Sarge to the point where he must attempt to kill him – a totally understandable urge, by the way, happens to everyone, some of us even daily,” the AI looked at Caboose and sighed deeply, “isn’t enough, and instead of merely pissing of his CO, Grif has driven Bitters to the point where assassination is the only solution. Nice work.”

Grif was grateful that Simmons was also out of armor, otherwise he would have felt oddly small. Simmons placed a hand on his shoulder and Grif was too tired to shrug it off. “Jensen swears it was an accident,” Simmons told them all and knowing his Lieutenant he knew it was the truth.

Church did not look convinced. “So?” he asked with a shrug before turning towards the Blue soldier in the room. “Hey Caboose, who killed me with a tank?”

“Tucker did it.” That answer just came automatically at this point.

The AI looked at Simmons with his arms crossed in satisfaction. “And point made.”

“Donut, what the fuck is that?” Grif was pointing at the vase (which was ugly enough in itself – a bright pink with yellow vines creating a pattern like snakes moving across the ground) and the mess of a flower bouquet spreading from it like a disease in all shapes and sizes (most of them way too big for Grif’s liking).

“Get-well flowers! While blue normally would be the ideal choice for any hospital-related circumstances, due to its amazing ability to enhance calm and tranquility, I figured it would be quite inappropriate given our situation.”

Grif looked at the mess in his hands, hoping it soon would burst into flames if he stared hard enough. “Donut, all flowers, no matter what situation or color, are inappropriate.”

“Nonsense! I arranged all the colors of our team into this bouquet.” Donut proudly corrected some flower heads that had fallen slightly. “Orange, which obviously had to be included, is a symbol for friendship.”

Behind him, Grif could hear Simmons snicker.

“Maroon expresses a very deep love.”

A smile returned to Grif’s face as he looked over his shoulder to irritate Simmons. “Hah – now we can’t even make fun of Donut’s pink armor. This is even better.”

“And while I couldn’t find anything for lightish red, I did manage to find that a lightish pink is perfect for any form of celebration. And a red like Sarge’s color is a symbol for energy.”

“Energy? How many volts? Now when I think about it, I wouldn’t mind being the human expression of the electric chair.”

“And brown is a symbol of our connection to our dear old Mother Earth,” Donut continued and sighed dreamily.” Oh, how I miss her. But unfortunately for Lopez, brown would really mess up the color scheme I’ve created here!”

“Couldn’t have that,” Tuckered snickered, holding back a laugh. He seemed really grateful that Donut had avoided the Blue colors.

When Donut tried to hand him the bouquet, Grif swapped at it. “No offence, Donut, but get that fucking thing out of my face!”

“I see your painkillers are making you extra grumpy today,” Donut hummed but did not seemed faced by it. “I’ll just put them in your room, then.”

“That’s not what I fucking meant!” Grif looked over his should to seek help at Simmons. “It’s your room too! Fight for it!”

“Yeah, and I have to share it with you! This might be the only way to get rid of your stench, since you still refuse to bathe daily.” With a sigh, he gave Donut a nod. “Just put it on a high shelf. He can’t reach it.”

“Sucks to be you,” Church told him.

Grif threw his arms up in frustration. “I know! This is a violation against my property!”

“Hey!” Donut yelled out, obviously offended, cradling his flowers a bit closer.

Church looked down at Grif and snapped at him: “No, I’m talking to Simmons, idiot.”

Simmons frowned, glancing from the AI back to Grif. “Me? Why?” he asked cautiously.

“You really think Grif’s going to move around himself?” Church asked him with a snicker. “Or, more importantly, do you really think any one of us is going to put up with him? And you claim to be the smart one.”

Simmons’ expression faltered as he realized Church was right. Grif had already leaned back in his chair, supporting his cheek with his hand. It did not seem like he was going to move the chair on his own which really wasn’t a surprise to anyone.

And while he was not exactly sure why he always stuck around Grif, Simmons knew this somehow had become his responsibility.

“Fuck.”

* * *

To his credit, Simmons lasted 48 hours.

48 hours where Grif spent every waking moment on complaining. His leg hurt, his back hurt from the chair, the bandages were itching and so on. But the amount of pushing that Simmons had to do was small – because of the bandages, Grif could not wear his armor, and so he preferred to stay in his room. Plus Matthews kept trying to track him down to bring more flowers (and they had enough with Donut’s bouquet) and Grif was doing his best to avoid facing any members of his squad.

But now it was lunch time and Simmons was trying to wheel him into the mess hall again, but that was when Grif had begun another argument about the pronunciation of _both_ and Simmons had simply given up.

Throwing his arms up in the air, Simmons let go of the wheelchair. “No. That’s it. I’m going to leave you here.”

“Simmons… No…” Grif said weakly, obviously not believing the threat. They were in the middle of an empty hallway and surely Simmons would not be cruel enough to live him here. Had it been the mess hall or his own room where food was relatively nearby, the maroon soldier might have tried to teach him a lesson.

Simmons had put his hands on his hips. “I swear to God. You’re either going to make some new friends or start using your fucking arms. It’s not that hard, dipshit.”

“I’m fucking injured!”

“Not your arms! Why the fuck do you think Dr. Grey gave you a wheelchair?” Simmons shrieked and gestured wildly towards the advice that Grif was sitting on.

“So _you_ could push me!” Grif snapped back. When he realized that Simmons had taken another step away from him, he became desperate.” You can’t leave me here with this deathtrap! The bees are going to find me!” He held out the vase with Donut’s flowers. Until now Simmons had been stubborn enough to keep it in their quarters, but after the bees had showed up (and where the fuck did they came from?!) it was time for the flowers to die. Grif had gotten the idea to let Matthews deliver them to Bitters as a punishment. Poetry and flowers. So far Grif’s methods of torture sounded like a romantic date.

“Not my problem!”

Grif tried to kick him with his legs. “But I am your problem! I’ve always been!”

“I _know_. I need a break.”

“Siiimons”

“It’s your fault.”

“You can’t leave me here!”

“Sure I can.”

“In the hallway? Alone?”

“You can fucking leave if you want to!”

“But I don’t want to! I am a victim of a serious crime and I demand assistance,” Grif told him sternly, pouting.

Had he not been wearing a helmet, Simmons would have been pulling at his own hair in frustration. “You demand attention, and I’m sick of it. Have fun.”

“Simmons? Simmons, I swear – I won’t move an inch and when I die from starvation, the guilt will keep you up at night and you’ll never get your fucking 8 recommended hours of sleep, and then you can no longer blame my snoring so fuck you!”

But Grif’s threats fell on deaf ears and Simmons marched out of the hallway with his head held high. When the door slammed closed, Grif cursed under his breath before leaning back in his chair. He was not going anywhere.

A faint sound of buzzing seemed to echo from behind him, and Grif looked over his shoulder in alarm to see if the bees had managed to catch up with him.

* * *

Simmons had figured Grif would perhaps spend half an hour pouting. At the maximum. Grif was too lazy to follow through on anything. Sooner or later he would give up, use his arms and make his way into the mess hall where he could yell at Simmons and then Simmons would make things seem fair by offering to push him back to his room. Lesson learned: don’t piss off the people you depend on.

But now it was a long time since lunch had ended and Grif was yet to show up. Simmons wondered if he had made his way back to his room, but then remembered that his Grif had a special talent when it came to doing nothing.

In fact it would not surprise Simmons if he had fallen asleep in his chair in that fucking hallway.

But Simmons had his pride to protect and refused to head back and fetch him. Then Grif could just annoy him by accusing him of having a weak will.

So when Simmons spotted Bitters walking through the hall, he saw the perfect opportunity.

“Hey, Bitters!”

It really was perfect. First of all, Simmons would not need to fetch Grif. That saved him an amount of dignity. Secondly, now Bitters could finally face Grif after the accident. Both of them had put surprisingly much effort into avoiding each other. Simmons did not understand why but Grif had made it clear that he was in no mood to face his Lieutenant (“Do you know how you make things awkward, Simmons? You fucking shoot the person you’re having an argument with!”).

Bitters froze, glanced to all directions as he searched for an opportunity to escape, but finally trudged back to where Simmons was sitting. “Uhhh…?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Uh?” He was clearly unsure of why a Captain who was not his own wanted to talk to him. He was prepared for a scolding, perhaps, for shooting his best friend, and the idea of getting a task seemed suspicious.

“It’s important.”

Bitters narrowed his eyes in confusion behind his visor. “So I should go get Jensen?” He could understand if it was Tucker who was giving him orders, since he had been the official leader for the entire team, but it rarely happened that the Captains would rely on Lieutenants who were not their own.

Simmons seemed to be aware of that as well and sputtered a bit before he gained his confidence. “No, uh, I give commands. Also to you.”

“Yeah, I’m busy.”

“This is a real chance for you to prove yourself,” Simmons offered. Shooting your own Captain was not something that easily ignored. But on the contrary, Sarge shooting Grif when he had been a Private was not a thing that caused someone to raise an eyebrow. The world was strange that way.

“That’s not what I-“

Simmons had spent 48 hours with a grumpy Grif and was honestly in no mood for another slacker. “Bitters, just go fetch it for me.”

“Fetch what?”

So that was the tricky part of his plan. Bitters would obviously not face Grif on purpose, but who said he needed to know what he was heading into? “Oh, you’ll know when you see it. You know that hallway just left of the western storage room?”

“Uh?” He obviously didn’t.

Simmons sighed and began giving direction: “Take that door, go straight until you reach the locker room with the malfunction sign but everyone uses anyway because the flush actually works after three attempts, and then you go left, left, right, then left, straight ahead until you reach the broken lamp – the one that still flashes every once in a while, not the one with the cracked glass – and then right, right and you’re there.”

“ _Uh_?”

He sighed again. “I’ll draw a map.”

“What am I looking for?” Bitters asked rather suspiciously. “Is it heavy?”

You know, that was actually a funny question if you knew the truth. “In a way,” Simmons said without mentioning any details. “You can handle it.”

Bitters kept staring at him, obviously looking for the catch.

“It’s easy to find once you’re there,” Simmons tried to encourage him. “You’ll notice it. It’s not small. In fact, you’ll probably see it immediately. It’s an eyesore, really… You better get going.” Behind his visor, Simmons was grinning as he said, “It’s _not_ going to move by itself.”

* * *

Grif had fallen asleep by the time the door swung open. The hallways had been almost deserted, and Grif had hidden his distress to the few soldiers that had walked by him. He did not need their comments on his situation. The bee had turned out to be a fly, so that was one less problem to deal with.

Rubbing his eyes, he asked: “Bitters? What the fuck? Did Simmons send you?”

Bitters stood frozen, carefully watching his situation. He helmet slowly went downwards as he eyed Grif in the wheelchair with the flowers in his lap. He had not expected this. “…yes?” He frowned as he focused on the bouquet. “I think he wants me to fetch him this… thing?”

“Donut’s bouquet,” Grif said in a tone that warned him not to ask further about it.

“Oh.” Bitters reached forward and accepted the vase from his Captain who seemed more than happy to get rid of it. The Lieutenant looked at the flowers in distrust. “This isn’t heavy,” he said, remembering Simmons’ description. But it was an eye-sore, it was big and it was quite easy to spot (in fact, the bright colors made it impossible to miss), so it had to be it, right?

“Try lifting it when the bees were eating it,” Grif replied dryly. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on since there was no way that Simmons had changed his mind about this disaster of a decoration. But since his friend had spent the last two days trying to convince him to talk things out with his Lieutenant, he guessed this was Simmons way of getting his will. Well, at least it was a chance to get out of the hallway. “Bitters, wheel me back to my room.”

“Why?”

“’cause that’s a fucking order, Bitters.”

Bitters shifted, looking as uncomfortable as Grif felt with the situation. “Uh, Captain Simmons really wanted these flowers. I think.” 

“Believe me, he doesn’t.”

“He ordered me to fetch them,” Bitters told him sternly in a screw-you tone. While Grif wanted a way out of the situation as well, he was not going to let him go that easily.

He breathed in deeply before asking: “Bitters, are you a girl?”

The question seemed to be a surprise for the Lieutenant. “Uh… No?” He shifted awkwardly with the vase in his hands.

 “There really shouldn’t be need for hesitation there, Bitters. But if you’re not a girl then Simmons is not your Captain. I’m your Captain, and I’m telling you to move it. Go propose to Simmons later.” 

Bitters looked like he was about to argue, but Grif just stared at him with two tired eyes until he saw his Lieutenant’s shoulder fall in defeat. “Yes, sir.” Bitters handed him back the flowers before gripping the hilts on the back of the chair.

He did push him the way back, but Grif wasn’t exactly light and Bitters wasn’t exactly muscular. It took its time. And in all that time none of them said a word.

Grif thought the awkward silence could not get worse, but then it’s broken when one of his wheels started to squeak. Every few seconds in a steady rhythm as Bitters kept pushing, it would make the sound again. Grif mentally swore to himself that he would get back on Simmons later.

It was Grif who broke the silence, but first when they had arrived at his quarters and Bitters had let go of his chair to open the door. “You know, if you’re that mad, you could have just punched me.”

Bitters froze but after a couple of seconds, Grif could see the tension leave his body. “Nah. I got a weak swing.”

Grif took the little bit of humor as a good sign and continued: “Which is why you should have punched me! You think I would prefer a bullet in the thigh?” 

“I didn’t mean to do _that_ ,” Bitters finally said, pushing the chair indoors. He turned on the light and stood still in the doorway. There was no humor in his voice this time but instead that touch of bitterness that had been driving Grif crazy the last week.

“So you’re still pissed?” He asked and Bitters said nothing. “That blows. You know, when Simmons is mad at me, and I don’t know why, I just ignore it until he loses it and dictate exactly what I should say as an apology. Like, ‘ _sorry, Simmons, for accidently setting your bed on fire with my cigarette’_ and ‘ _sorry, Simmons, for stealing your metal polishes when I should have been aware that it would not improve my rusty melee skills, because even if you ignore that it’s an expression, it would require that I had skills in the first place’_ , and yeah, he makes the longest and stupidest excuses ever, but you know what, Bitters? At least they get the job done. So bring it on and tell me what I should be sorry for, and I might even put some feeling into it, just for you.”

Grif sat in his stupid wheelchair with a stupid bouquet in his lap and his stupid Lieutenant was just staring at him. He was tired and his leg hurt and Simmons would not let him take more painkillers until the afternoon, and Bitters was still just staring at him, and it fucking sucked.

He was tired and the whole silent bitterness-thing was getting on his nerves. He had put effort into making Bitters drop whatever he had against him, and all Bitters can do was to stare at him.

When Bitters finally spoke, he said: “That’s a real shitty way of apologizing.”

“You know me well enough to know that I don’t put effort into anything. But I’m real tired of this bullshit and I already have Sarge shooting at me, so just tell me what I fucked up this time.”

Bitters didn’t tell him. Instead turned around, walked out of the room, leaving an annoyed and stunned Grif behind. Some seconds later Bitters appeared again, though only mutter something about Simmons and flowers under his breath and took the bouquet from Grif who had no problem with letting go of it.

Then he was gone, and Grif decided this was not worth the trouble. If Bitters wanted to be stubborn, then fine. In four days he would be spending his time in the armory with Lopez and Donut, and Bitters would have to run laps for Wash.

Some seconds later he decided that in four days things would suck a bit more than normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s take a moment to appreciate my – uh, I mean Palomo’s – poetry skills. Rhyming will appear in future chapters so be prepared.  
> While I actually did some research for the flower color meaning, it’s all from the internet which we all know can be unreliable, so if some flower enthusiast has been pissed off by this, I swear, Donut didn’t mess it up on purpose.  
> So the originally idea for this fic was actually Grif in a wheelchair. That idea was inspired from my own life, since I might be facing a surgery that would leave me in a wheelchair for months. Discussing this with my best friend, letting her know that she would have to push me around everywhere, we created some of the dialogue between Simmons and Grif with our bickering. And boom – a fic is born


	5. It Stings Like a Bee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif causes a mess, Bitters does not laugh and Simmons fails miserably.

In hindsight, it was perhaps not the best idea. While the confrontation between Grif and Bitters had to happen (because, holy fuck, Simmons was tired of a sulking Grif), it was not ideal to bring the quite possibly irritated Grif here afterwards. Especially since Simmons had been the one to arrange all this.

Luckily for Simmons, he knew how to deal with a Grif who was set on bitching. Their time in the army had taught him that much – which barely counted as a skill: how had they survived this far again?! So Simmons prepared himself for the encounter by fetching a second tray of lunch, all while glancing nervously over his shoulder in case Grif should come back before Simmons was ready.

But no wheelchair came through the mess hall’s door, and Simmons could no longer ignore the tiniest twinge of guilt. He had left an injured Grif to fend for himself, but that action was totally understandable. Plus, he had sent Bitters to fetch him, so there was no way that anyone could call Simmons irresponsible. But then again, this was Bitters and Grif was the type of Captain that would never put emphasis on the importance of following out orders immediately like any good respectable soldier would, so there was the chance that Bitters still hadn’t even found his Captain yet.

Simmons was just about to leave his chair to check up on Grif, at a respectable distance of course, when Bitters stepped inside the hall. The first thing Simmons noticed was the fact that Bitters was not pushing a wheelchair. Not that his hands were empty – in fact, they were quite filled.

“What the fuck is this?!” Simmons could not help but shriek, flailing his arms at the bouquet Bitters was carrying. While Simmons had been worried about facing Grif again, it would be better than this, since the bouquet was mockingly telling him that his plan had failed. Simmons was not a fan of being proved wrong. Or flowers, for that sake.

Bitters’ movements were very stiff when he hands the vase over. “You asked for it.” He paused, as if suddenly remembering something, and added: “Sir.” Had they not been wearing helmets, it would have been obvious that the Captain’s mouth was agape like a fish out of water.

“Wha- no.” Simmons looked down at the display of colors in his hands and wondered how the flowers could still look so fresh. He would have suspected Donut for bringing a decoration made of plastic, had the smell not been so penetrating – wait, that was probably the wrong choice of verb when it came to Donut… “No, no, no. I told you to fetch Grif! Gri-iif,” he said, as if trying to explain the problem to Lopez.

Bitters crossed his arms. “I was ordered to fetch something in the hallway.”

“But I meant Grif!”

“ _You_ didn’t say that.”

“Wait, so Grif was not in the hallway?” Simmons asked with a frown. Had he been calculating all this wrong? His strategy seemed to have failed dearly so far.

Bitters, who seemed to be very tired of the conversation, replied, “He _was_ there. _I_ pushed him back to his room when he ordered me to. Am I dismissed now? I have – “He hesitated for a moment as he searched for an excuse, but then finally decided to go with _fuck it_ “- _something_ to do.”

Simmons had calmed a bit down now when he knew the exact location of Grif. It was not like orange soldier was going to move on his own. Plus this meant that his plan had not failed. Now he just had to examine the results. “And?”

“And I have to go. Now. Sir.”

“No, I mean: _and_ how did he take it?”

Bitters was quiet for three seconds as he tried to catch up on Simmons’ line of thoughts. “He didn’t like the flowers?” he finally said in a hesitant tone.

“I know that. No one likes the flowers – they are a safety hazard.” As he finished his sentence, he looked down at what he was currently holding in alarm, and promptly placed them on the table behind them. “I’m asking whether Grif is still-“ When he straightened out his back to face the Lieutenant, Bitters was already gone.

Simmons breathed in through his nose before exclaiming: “ _Really_?! The one thing Grif actually teaches him and it’s that trick?! Oh, I feel bad for his bunkmates ‘cause he’ll disappear every time it’s his turn to mop the floor even though the chore wheel specifically says-“

The maroon soldier trailed off when he realized the soldiers, who were enjoying their lunch at the table he was standing at, were staring at him. “Oh, don’t judge you me – you haven’t tried living with him yet,” Simmons muttered under his breath, but it was already too late to halt the awkwardness.

Simmons shifted his feet, grabbing the flowers before uttering some half-finished excuses and marching away from the still attentive table.

Even if Bitters had run off before he had answered Simmons’ question, the answer seemed pretty clear.

And that meant Simmons had a sulking Grif waiting for him in their quarters.

When Simmons realized his mistake by leaving the food tray behind, it was already too late. When he looked over his shoulder he saw that a soldier (presumable one from Grif’s squad – it wouldn’t surprise him if that was the case) had already seized the opportunity to get an extra portion of food.

That left Simmons with a bouquet of flowers that he could definitely not give Grif. So instead he went to the bussing counter. He had expected it to be much harder to get the pudding for Grif, seeing how he had already picked up two trays of lunch today. Even with his spotless reputation, Simmons still had to follow the food delegations.

However, it was surprisingly easy to get the dessert when you faced the lunch lady with a bunch of flowers in your hand.

* * *

Simmons returned to his quarters in a good mood. The bouquet was finally gone, and he had a way to get rid of sulking Grif and bring back normal level of grumpiness that Grif would stay on.

The orange soldier was busy with the task of getting himself from the wheelchair to his bed when Simmons entered the room. The maroon soldier hesitated for a moment; just taking in the sight of Grif struggling to get the lower half of his body the same way as his torso.

Grif was panting when he finally looked up at him. “What? Are you going to help me before I break my left leg - _your_ leg? You know you’re going to whine about it, even if you aren’t the one in pain.” The wheelchair was tipping dangerously to one side as Grif delivered his threat.

“Ugh, you are hopeless,” Simmons sighed but helped him nonetheless. With his hands under his shoulders, he supported the orange soldier towards the bed before he could cripple himself even further.

When Grif had made himself comfortable – back against the wall and his hands folded on top of his stomach – he tilted his head towards Simmons. “So why did you ask Bitters to bring you flowers?”

“Don’t put it like that,” Simmons replied quickly, his visor hiding a visor. “But, uh, I was thinking…”

“You do a lot of that,” Grif sulked. “Thinking. I’m not really a fan of that.”

“Well, someone had to –“

“No, Simmons. I know your big hobby is waxing floors and stuff, but you don’t have to clean up my messes.”

The maroon soldier huffed and could not help but notice the fact that Grif’s laundry was still lying at the end of the bed. Of course Grif could excuse himself with his injury, but he could at least try to make an effort. “Well, if I didn’t, our room would be a complete pigsty by now, asshole.”

“What can I say? It’s comfy.”

Simmons grunted something meant as an answer and threw the pudding at Grif. He actually managed to catch it this time and when he opened his hands to get a look at it, he raised an eyebrow in suspicion. “What? You got a stash of these somewhere?”

“Hardly. And if I did, I couldn’t tell you about it since you’ll just begin to plan a raid.”

Grif furrowed his brows, twiddling the package of dessert with his hands. “Yeah… Probably wouldn’t worry about that. Raids haven’t really been that successfully lately… as in we sucked bad. Do you know how many times Kimball has assigned me to dish duty? ‘cause I’m trying to come up with alternative ways of eating without using a plate. If we just invested in plastic bags to cover them, I’d have a whole lot more free time.”

“Of course this is something you put effort into,” Simmons snorted, a little more rough than intended, but Grif could take it.

“Was that supposed to be a snarky comment, Simmons?” Grif asked and his frown had only grown bigger since the conversation has begun. The pudding was still unopened – that worried the maroon soldier more than he let on.

“At least I actually try to make my team work and not just give up like a –“

“-good-for-nothing dirtbag?” Grif suggested with his jaw set.

Simmons shifted his feet, eying his friend’s sour expression. “Did Bitters piss you off or what? Or did you just get tired of his so-called maverick moves?”

“Geez, try getting shot in the leg and see how happy you can be,” Grif snapped at him to deflect the questions.

“Well, since Sarge failed to connect the wires probably, I still have no pain-sensory system installed in my left leg, so it probably would not be a big problem.”

 Grif snorted loudly. “We can’t all be that lucky.”

“Just be grateful that I was willing to save your fat ass.”

“I would be pretty grateful if you could stop your fucking meddling,” Grif grumbled. He had finally begun to open his dessert, but he was struggling to get his short fingernails under the lid. “Look, Bitters and I are going to work it out by doing nothing – that thing works, even if you can’t fucking grasp that concept.”

“What thing?! You just said you were doing nothing!”

Grif nodded slowly. “Exactly. And it works.”

“ _What_?!” Simmons sputtered for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief before raising an accusing finger. “Fine, dickhead, if it works so perfectly then why is Kimball going to fire you in four days?”

“Wrong again, Simmons. I’m going to quit in four days – very big difference there.”

While the maroon soldier really wanted to disagree immediately– and he had the arguments ready – he knew he had to use a different approach. “So that’s your plan? Really?”

“Look, Simmons. Two days ago, I had a bullet dug out from my thigh. My snack stash is running low. My squad hates training sessions more than I do. We have two crazy mercenaries planning their gruesome revenge on us. It really shouldn’t surprise you that I want a break. I’m just crossing my fingers that a demotion won’t mean I get assigned to any of you fuckers’ squad.”

“Grif-“

“’cause there’s no way in hell I’m going to let you boss me around. Or Caboose – I have that much dignity left. And fuck, Tucker is going to be the stupidest gloating asshole that –“

“Grif!” Simmons shrieked loud enough to cut the orange solder off.

He raised his head to stare at him, revealing his annoyed expression. “What?”

“This is really what you want?”

Grif hesitated and looked at his hands. The pudding lid kept stuck to his fingers and he tried to shake it off, resulting in getting tiny drops of pudding in his bed. Not that he cared about that. “Well, better than letting the idiots get themselves killed.”

Simmons crossed his arms as he leaned against the wall again. “See, now I’m torn between being proud of you taking responsibility or being disappointed since you are giving up.”

“How about we just skip the touchy feel shit?” Grif said sourly with pudding staining the corners of his mouth.

“Good idea.”

Simmons eyes flickered when an empty package of pudding was thrown at the floor. Grif had apparently managed to eat it all before Simmons had even registered he had opened it.

The maroon soldier sighed loudly. “Really?”

Without his helmet on, Grif was free to send Simmons his biggest smirk. “Help a crippled man, Simmons. Or leave it on the floor.” He shrugged, but his eyes revealed he found the situation very amusing. “I don’t care.”

“This is torture,” Simmons groaned, and two seconds later he buckled under from the pressure and kneeled down to pick up Grif’s mess.

He could feel Grif’s grin burn through his back as he marched towards the trash can. The bedridden soldier called out from behind him: “No, pure torture is to be left behind with the flowers. So who did you doom to get rid of it?”

Feeling pretty proud from his way of getting rid of that problem (not that it improved their current situation that much, but this was one less problem to deal with at the moment and that was indeed an achievement) Simmons could not help but smile as he revealed: “The mess hall now has a new decoration – a rather horrid decoration, but they aren’t that picky.” Some of the canteen staff had actually smiled as he had handed over the flowers, as if they were a gift and not an actual health hazard. Simmons had let them have their innocent obliviousness.

“Aw man – you know I liked that place.” Grif grin was replaced with a scowl as he imagined his favorite spot, or well, it shared the perfect rank along with his bed, being invaded by bees.

“They have to wilt at some point,” Simmons said with a shrug. “If no one waters them, it’ll approximately take around 6 days, though you have to count in the type of flowers and –“

Grif was rubbing his temples as he grumbled: “Just stop talking. I think you just made the pain in the leg spread to my brain.”

“It really does not work that way, dumbass.”

“You are not helping, dipshit,” Grif growled and glared at him through the corner of his eyes.

Simmons wrung his hands, hesitating before deciding to have some pity on the injured soldier. “Do you want your painkillers?”

“No, I want to suffer in agony, because pain makes you stronger and all that shit we were told in Basic. Take a hint, nerd.”

Simmons made a point out of walking very slowly towards the drawer where Grif had placed (and by placed he meant where Grif had dropped the armful of bottles containing the pills Dr. Gray had conscripted him. Simmons had organized it the best he could but would always later return to see a mess of toppled over bottles. He was still amazed by the fact that Grif had not managed to overdose himself by accident yet) the painkillers and other various pills he needed to upkeep his transplanted organs.

“Have you ever considered getting the objects you need before you settle in bed?” Simmons grumbled as he turned over the bottles in search for the right one. If Grif was going to die by an overdose, it was not going to be Simmons’ fault. “For someone who hates lifting their fat ass, you don’t think far.”

“That’s why I have you, Simmons. You do all the thinking and you fetch my stuff for me. Teamwork.”

“That’s not teamwork – that’s me doing all the work and you doing nothing!” Simmons told him as he marched over to deliver the pills.

Grif made grabby-hands and accepted the bottle without as much as a ‘thank you’. “And guess what, Simmons – that means teamwork is 50% complete! I say that’s enough progress in one day!” He swallowed the pills dry before Simmons could offer him a glass of water. Not that he was going to ask so, he had fetched enough things for Grif already, but Grif’s bad way of dealing with medicine still annoyed him.

Simmons took the bottle from Grif before he could drop it on the floor. “If Kimball tries to assign you to my team, I’d offer to take Palomo instead.”

“Come on, Simmons.” Grif sounded a little bit offended as he tried to make himself comfortable again.

Simmons ignored him and took place on his own bed, hands folded in his lap. “And you know that Tucker would be very happy to accept that deal. He might even raise his offer to make it fair.”

“Oh, fuck you. So what if you become my Captain? You’d give me order, I’ll ignore them. You’ll give me lessons about being respectful, I’ll ignore them. I really don’t see the big change.”

“You wish, asshole. I’ll make you run so many laps you’ll be begging Wash to be your fulltime CO instead.”

“Simmons, I’m literally the living proof of why running sucks. I’ve been traumatized, _scarred_. Running for my life might be the only reason why I’d ever move again.”

That earned a snort from Simmons, even though he could believe his friend’s words. “Good thing we still have Felix and Locus lurking around.”

Grif went along with the sarcasm. “Yep. Best news I’ve heard all day.”

Knowing Grif’s problems at the moment, that might be true, which was more than a little bit sad. “Your day must have sucked then.”

Grif had slowly slid down the wall to rest his head against the pillow. “Yeah. It did.” He yawned and prepared himself to fall asleep as the painkillers kicked in. Simmons would wait for a moment before he would leave.

He had, kind of, settled things with Grif – at least the orange soldier was not mad at him – and while Grif had the opportunity to take the rest of the day off, Simmons still had hours of training sessions with his squad. And Grif’s squad too now, since they were lacking a healthy and eager Captain (not that Grif had ever been active, but a moody half-drugged Grif in a wheelchair would merely tell his squad to take a day off which was why Simmons had felt the need to take over.

That and the fact that some of Grif’s men had been coming up with an alternative training course for Simmons’ squad and when Simmons found out why half of his team had gone missing to play volleyball, he had to step in) Simmons had to train them as well. Simmons had still not found the heart to tell Grif that Gold Team did fine (if fine meant ‘not suck entirely’) under his watch and that Bitters had been quite obedient (if obedient meant ‘accepting orders with a shrug instead of a salute, but he never went directly against what Simmons said’) in the last training session.

Simmons had reached for the doorknob when Grif suddenly called out: “So, I’m gonna go see Kimball tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“To wish her a happy fucking birthday – Simmons, you know why!”

Turning around on his heel, Simmons tried to gain eye-contact with him but Grif kept staring at the ceiling. “You still have half a week left!”

“Yeah, which I am going to spend in my bed or chair anyway. It’s not like it can change things. ‘sides, all the stress is ruining my sleep. I finally get days off, I am not going to let anything screw them up.” He turned over to stare at the wall. “Might as well get it over with.”

“Seriously? You’re just gonna –“

“Nap? Yep. Those painkillers work fast.” Grif yawned again. “See you later, Simmons.”

“You fucking planned this? Grif, you can’t just drug yourself to get out of an argument!”

Apparently he could. It was a dick move, but it worked. Simmons cursed at a fast asleep Grif before giving up and leaving the room, slamming the door shut behind him to block out the snores.

* * *

“Wanna hear a joke?”

Bitters did not pause to think about his answer. “No.” Again, he wondered just why he chose to hang around Palomo when he had a headache. But honestly, the only thing the Lieutenants could spend their break on, especially now with the mess hall closed, seemed to be standing around talking. And the one thing that made a break even better was to have a break in front of the people who were still working.

Hence why they were watching a Fed patrol run laps around one of the bigger halls connected to the training facility.

Palomo ignored Bitters’ reply and raised his voice with a not-so-hidden glance towards the running Feds as he said: “Do you know why the Rebel shot the Fed?”

Bitters breathed out through his nose. Slowly. He looked at Palomo. “Are you waiting for me to ask?”

The soldier, finally realizing Bitters was being a tough crowd, (if he could even be counted as a crowd) turned towards Jensen who had been studying some of her recent blue-prints for the newest warthog improvements. Not that they actually had the supplies to carry out her ideas, but during the war the mechanics had learned to settle with a tin can attached to the vehicle and somehow make it work as a shield. “Katie?”

“Well, natural curiosity has never hurt before,” the Lieutenant said cheerfully, not even noticing Bitters snort as a reaction to her statement. “Why did he shoot him, Palomo?”

Palomo made a dramatic pause, holding his breath until: “Because he was _fed_ up with him.”

Bitters’ only reaction was to exhale. Jensen made an unsure sound as if someone had just offered her plate that looked a bit too lively to be tasty. The joke did, however, earn a half-heartedly chuckle from a Fed who ran by. “You like that one, Fed?” Palomo called out, his voice a mix between menacingly and curious.

“You know, a bit offensive, but I really like that word play.”

“You’re welcome, asshole!”

“Keep up the work, scum,” the Fed called over his shoulder before he ran out of hearing range.

There was a moment of silence where the Lieutenants just stood and appreciated (or perhaps just being dumbfounded by) the passive aggressive conflict the civil war had developed into. Of course Palomo was the one to break that silence. “Okay, so any ideas of how to make the joke more offensive?”

Jensen put a finger on the chin area of her helmet. “Well, hypothetically, an insult at the end of the sentence should do the trick, though it probably won’t buy you points on creativity. Not that it wouldn’t be quite inappropriate given the fact we’re at a truce.”

Palomo barely took the time to think about her answer before he snapped his fingers. “Ooh, I got another one. When the Feds are acting out their defense strategy, which position do they take?”

Katie inhaled as she was about to open her mouth, but Bitters cut her off with a dark: “Don’t.”

Unfortunately, it did not stop Palomo from acting like a comedian. Or, at least try to. “Fed-al position.”

Both Bitters and Jensen winched beneath their visor. However, the only comment came from the Fed who had finished another lap to run past them again. “That one’s just weak!”

Palomo flipped him the finger. “Go fuck yourself!” His mood perked up again when he spotted Andersmith marching in their direction, returning from a patrol duty. “Hey, Smith, why did the rebel shoot the Fed?”

The soldier froze in some seconds of heavy thought where he considered his answer carefully. Finally, he spoke with a steady voice as if he seemed very sure of his reply. “Because Charon let their greed run to their head which resulted in massive manipulation to expand the civil war and thus forcing the Rebel to shoot the Fed by letting him believe he was the true enemy.”

Palomo held up a finger, opened his mouth, closed his mouth, lowered his finger, and opened his mouth again. “Well, yeah…”

“Not to forget our dreams and hopes for the future that inspired us to keep fighting,” Jensen added helpfully.

Andersmith nodded in approval before coming with his own: “The need to secure the planet’s scarce resources which the Fed might have claimed for his army.”

“Shooting the Fed as a defense mechanism is also very likely,” Jensen told Palomo who seemed at lost now when his joke had been ruined before it had even been told.

“Avenging his family,” Bitters suddenly cut in, voice low and dark. Then came a tense silence where the Lieutenants lowered their eyes to glare at their feet. Bitters shifted under the sudden change of mood, which he found quite unfair considered the fact that he had just joined the others in their explanation of why the Rebel had kept fighting. And his suggestion was right. They all knew that.

So awfully right.

“So, I probably shouldn’t tell my joke now?” Palomo finally said.

“Probably not,” Andersmith replied in a tone that even managed to keep the youngest soldier silent.

But before Palomo would grow tired of the silence, because that was bound to happen, Jensen tilted her helmet in wonder. “Is that Captain Grif?” she asked out loud, gesturing to the other end of the hall, behind the Feds, where Grif was trying to spin his wheelchair around in order to get past the line of running soldiers without getting knocked over. It went as well as you would expect from a stubborn, clumsy, overweight dude in a crappy wheelchair.

Andersmith followed her glance. “I don’t think Bitters have managed to send anyone else in a wheelchair.”

“What is he doing down here?” Jensen asked, watching Grif almost toppling over his own chair.

“Well, the mess hall _is_ still closed.” Palomo cut in. The orange Captain had made a point out of staying away from anyone but Simmons (someone had to push the chair) the last two days, spending his time either in the mess hall or his room. Now with the accident in the mess hall, he was running out of spaces to sulk in.

Andersmith nodded and asked: “Is there any updates on the bee situation?”

“They’ve managed to destroy the hive, but poor Pertone is still in the infirmary. But Dr. Grey is sure they can deal with the swelling so that he soon is able to sit again,” Jensen replied cheerfully.

The Lieutenants all tilted their head when Grif proceeded to wheel himself into a delivery crate, resulting in a stack of medical packs to fall over and hit his face. Even though they were too far away to hear it, it was clear from Grif’s wild arm gestures that he was swearing loudly.

 “Shouldn’t you be helping him?” Andersmith asked, turning to Bitters who did not as much as shrug. The oldest soldier than seemed to realize who he was talking to and corrected his own sentence. “Shouldn’t we be helping him?”

“Don’t.” They all almost jumped when Simmons appeared behind them from out of nowhere. “Don’t help him.” He was glaring intensely at the struggling Grif, clearly scowling with his arms crossed.

“Uhm, sir?” Jensen asked insecurely, sensing something had happened that they did not know about.

“The idiot doesn’t need any help being a moron. He wants to go through with it – he gets to do all the hard work.” Simmons’ words were hard and he finished them with a snort.

“Captain Grif claims he’s taking pride in staying away from hard work,” Andersmith suggested carefully.

“Let’s hope that.” Simmons finally tore his glance away from Grif (who had now thrown all the med kits off himself, which had only resulted in a mess that he now had to direct his chair around) to stare at the stunned Lieutenants. “Don’t push his chair,” he warned them.

“Why? What’s going to happen?” Palomo asked, more curious than wary.

They could all feel Simmons’ glare darken under the visor as he set his eyes on Grif again, as if he was watching the cause of the end of the world as we knew it. “Idiocy,” he revealed darkly, like a soldier telling the horrors of war. Then he marched away from the group, voice turning light again as he called out: “Hey, Grif! Sarge wants to see you!”

Grif froze for a couple of seconds when he noticed his fellow Red soldier before trying to back away from him. “Fuck off, Simmons!”

“He’s waiting for you near Kimball’s office!” Simmons continued in the same light voice that immediately made Grif cautious.

One of the wheels ran over a medical pack, almost resulting in a crash. “Seriously, fuck you!”

“So I wouldn’t head that way if I were you. Unless you want Sarge to berate you. And you know how much his speeches of dirtbagness bore you.”

“You come any closer and I’ll run over your toes!”

The Lieutenants watched the scene display in the distance and wondering if it would keep up until their break ended. It was just as amusing as it was confusing.

“So do any of you have an urge to push Captain Grif’s chair?” Palomo then asked, sensing a catastrophe about the happen which meant the young soldier had to be present to trigger it.

“Palomo, just don’t,” Bitters told him slowly in a voice that actually managed to keep Palomo away from Grif the rest of the day.

“I wonder what all that is about,” Jensen said before they all turned around to leave the hall, now when Simmons had actually managed to chase Grif out of the room (not before crashing into another box, which turned out to be the perfect strategy since Simmons could not help but pick up and stack the packs properly before heading after the injured soldier who to Simmons’ relief had been forced to flee in the opposite direction of Kimball’s office).

Bitters wondered too. Until he didn’t. His mind got distracted by the rest of the day’s events (patrols, cocky Feds and straying bees were enough to keep anyone busy), and he had almost forgotten about Simmons’ warning until he met Matthews.

A happy Matthews.

Now that was something to make the warning bells clank.

“Oh, hey, Bitters!” Matthews chirped, walking down the hall with a bounce in his step. A bounce.

For a moment Bitters considered just turning around to ignore the obvious headache in front of him, but chances were Matthews was just going to follow him. “Hey.” He eyed the yellow-striped soldier closely, noticing how he seemed unable to stand still. “What?”

“Nothing.” For a short sweet second Bitters actually let himself believe that was the truth, but then Matthews had to continue: “Well, Captain Grif did say there was hope for me yet.” He was literally beaming with joy, as if they had just been told the planet had been saved.

Bitters was about to brush off the happiness with a ‘whatever’, but then he blinked and considered what he had just been told. “Huh? Grif praised you?” He had heard his Captain had handed over his platoon to Simmons the last couple of days due to being high on painkillers, but there was no way he could be this high.

“Aha.” Matthew’s smile was big enough to shine through the visor. “After I wheeled him to Kimball’s office, he told me I was the only decent soldier around here, since I actually carried out his orders unlike _other_ people.” He let out a badly hidden cough, and Bitters did not as much as flinch. It was not the first time Matthews had accused him of wearing down their Captain, though he had never been directly mad at him. Matthews understood the situation – his view was just tainted by his admiration of Grif. “See, I told you –“

“Wait. You did… You took him to Kimball?” Bitters said slowly, remembering Simmons’ warning from hours before.

Matthews nodded happily. “Well, heading into offices is only bad if you’ve summoned there, right? Unless they want you there to give you a promotion.” Yeah, that was clearly not the case. Even Matthews snapped out of his happiness to notice how Bitters had stiffened. “What do you know?”

Kimball’s office was only a few hallways away and Bitters immediately started walking, not even glaring at Matthews as he said: “Captain Simmons ordered us not to take him there.”

Matthews froze just for a moment before stumbling over his own feet in order to catch up with Bitters. “But – but I wasn’t present at that time! I never heard that! And since Captain Grif is our Captain, I will of course act on _his_ word. Even if obeying his orders means disobeying other orders, and then it can’t be counted as demerit. Right?” He wrung his hands nervously at the thought of being accused of disobedience.

Bitters did not even answer but marched straight into waiting room to the office Kimball had been assigned. He was heading towards the door, not minding whether the meeting was still going on because why the fuck should he care, when someone cleared their throat behind him.

General Doyle had made himself comfortable in a chair, his legs folded, and was staring at the Lieutenant who pulled his hand away from the doorknob now when the general was watching what would be a rude interruption. When Matthews entered the room seconds after, Doyle said: “Oh, I’m afraid Miss Kimball is quite a busy lady today. Here I am, waiting outside the door for 15 minutes in order to discuss the latest update on the weapon delegations. When people are asking for it to rain bullets, you know it’s a bit of a jam.” He let out a short chuckle that never managed to sound happy.

“Is Grif in there?” Bitters asked rather blunt, eyes heading towards the door again.

Matthews placed himself next to his fellow rebel soldier. “And did _Captain_ Grif say anything about a promotion?” He made sure to put emphasis on the title as a gentle reminder to Bitters who had a nasty habit of forgetting his manners.

“Quite the opposite, I’m afraid,” Doyle told them with a small sigh in his voice. “I understand that these matters require time to discuss –it’s the only reason I’ve let Miss Kimball take this long when she should be aware of the fact that this is an urgent problem. Nothing to do but wait, I suppose. I heard the most curious joke today, if you don’t mind me sharing it.”

“Wait –“ Bitters barely managed to say, but no one seemed to hear him.

“Why did the Rebel assault the Federal soldier?”

Bitters briefly wondered how many times you could hear the same joke in a day, but tried to ignore it in order to discuss the real problem. “What-?” he tried again but was once more cut off.

“He was fed by the soldier…” Doyle trailed off and his finger went to his helmet as he tried to remember. “No wait, I think I might be telling it wrong.”

Bitters did cut to the chase. “No, what did you mean by ‘quite the opposite’?” He could feel Matthews shifting his feet behind him as the other rebel too could sense that something was wrong.

Doyle tilted his head. “Well, perhaps it does not qualify to be the exact opposite. Voluntary demotion is not the same as being fired from the position.”

Matthews and Bitters both turned their head to share a glance. None of them said a word, and before they could even try to add more dialogue to the situation, the door opened behind them.

Grif’s grace (or rather ‘lack of’) had not been improved by the wheelchair.  He managed to drive it straight into the doorway, sending  shockwaves up his injured leg, in his attempt to get out of the office. “Ow.”

“Ca- “ They could hear Kimball cutting herself of in order to correct herself. “Grif, do you need -?”

“I got it.” Grif waved her off, finally managing to spin his chair the correct way and suddenly he was face to face with two of his soldiers. “Or not.”

For three seconds they just stared at each other, and while Grif was the only one actually showing his expression, he managed to keep it emotionless. Then the staring match was over and Bitters turned on his heel to march out of the room without a word.

When he was gone, Grif ran a hand down his face, glancing upwards at Matthews who was still standing in front of him with slumped shoulders. “Please just tell me that was caused by stage fright.”

Matthews sniffed. “I’m afraid we’re not ready to perform yet, sir.” His voice was wavering and he sniffed again.

“Thank god,” Grif breathed out. If anything could make this already fucked situation worse, it was Matthews’ poetry.

Matthews could not hold back a broken sob. “I… I think my allergy just flared up,” he said with zero confidence in his voice. Grif was really grateful the helmet was there to hide Matthews’ tears. Just judging from the sounds he was sure that sight would be very pathetic. “Am I dismissed, sir?”

“Matthews, you weren’t even supposed to be here.” In fact, if Bitters and Matthews had just been normal not-meddling soldiers (seriously, had Simmons set them up to this?), this conversation would not even be happening. They would have been told later but then Grif would be far away from Matthews when he had his breakdown.

“Ri-right, sir. Sorry.” He sniffed again, followed by a sharp inhale. “We are sorry for being such failures to you.”

“Oh god.” Grif closed his eyes because he really did not have the strength to deal with this problem. This wailing, broken, crying problem whose helmet somehow leaked enough for tears to fall through and hit the ground.

Finally, Matthews hurried away, almost falling over his own leg as he stumbled into the hallway. “Allergies!” he cried out again, even though no one, not even Caboose, would believe that.

Grif was wondering which category of fucked-up-problems-that-seriously-were-not-in-his-job-description this scene belonged in when Doyle gave one last comment on the situation. “Oh dear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, I’ve missed this story. I know this is a late update, but to my defense, I spent the time on writing a 50.000 words long RvB story. So I wasn’t lazy or anything… Just seriously inspired to write the other story.  
> And when I finally had the time to write this story, I felt so rusty. I spent hours just staring at the screen. I guess I kinda burned out after that one crazy productive month – I hope you can forgive my late update. On the other hand, I managed to bring Doyle in as well! Who’s left? Lopez? Gotta bring him in too so I can use my high school Spanish!  
> I was so tempted to name this chapter “Bees. My god.” So tempted.


	6. The War of Kissasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif and Bitters have a somewhat grown-up talk, and Simmons is a goddamn genius (but he already knew that).

“Donut, for the last fucking time, I didn’t ruin your stupid flowers!” Simmons snapped, finally losing his temper. He had been trying to get away from Donut the last ten minutes, but the pink soldier refused to let him go. Apparently Donut’s flowers could just as well have been his toes, so when the flowers had been stepped on his feelings had been hurt.

The pink soldier had his hands on his hips as he scolded Simmons. “Well, then why did Church tell me he has just seen some barbarous Feds lit up the trashcan they had thrown them into?”

Simmons knew that Church must have had a bit too fun with informing Donut of this, and mentally cursed the hologram for putting him in this situation. He did not have the time for this. Grif had managed to get out of his sight by knocking over the crates outside the armory. It had taken forever before Simmons had managed to pick up all the bullets, and by that point, Grif was far gone. Fearing the worst, Simmons had immediately headed for Kimball’s office but Donut had stopped him before he came so far.

“Of course they burned them. They were a danger to the soldiers’ health! And they were ugly,” he added, earning an offended gasp from the pink soldier. “And why are you yelling at me? I didn’t burn them!”

“But you gave them to the lunch ladies! Don’t get me wrong, they are lovely people, but if they wanted one, they could just have asked.”

“I’m pretty sure they just banned all flower arrangements in Armonia.”

“And they wonder why morale is so low around here! Good mood won’t just appear of itself, Simmons – you have to give it to them!”

Simmons resisted the urge to face-palm. “Look, Donut, I really have other things to do. Can’t you go pester the lunch ladies instead?”

“But you were the one who just gave away Grif’s gift. That is rude, Simmons, _rude_. Grif is already injured – he doesn’t need hurt feelings as well.”

Simmons bitterly thought that it was a bit too late for that, but answered, “Donut, Grif _hated_ your flowers.”

Donut somehow managed to look like he was pouting, even with his helmet on. “But I thought they would grow on him!”

“Oh, they did _grow_. Just not on him.” Simmons shifted his feet, knowing he was about to be too late for Grif to carry out his idiot plan. Honestly, Simmons was not even sure what his own plan was. Sure, he could keep Grif away from the office, but sooner or later, Simmons would have other duties to deal with. Right now, he was just counting on the fact that Grif did not like difficult obstacles. If getting to Kimball’s office seemed like too much work, Grif would just give up and take a nap somewhere.

So Simmons was literally trying to stop Grif from giving up by counting on his habit of giving up… Simmons was aware of the irony.

“Donut, seriously, I have to go. I have to stop Grif before –“

He was cut off by a loud wail that echoed across the room, and they both turned to see a yellow-striped soldier walking along the wall with his shoulders slumped in defeat. It seemed like he was trying to avoid any sort of attention, but due to the wet hiccups that kept leaving his mouth, everyone turned to see the pathetic sight.

Simmons managed to hear a high-pitched “I’m fine!” before Matthews stumbled his way out of the room.

There was a moment of silence before Simmons spoke his thoughts out loud. “Was that… Matthews?” The moment he said the word, the realization hit him. “Oh no.”

“Now that’s just sad.” Donut shook his head in sympathy. “If only we had something to brighten up the mood –“

“Shut up, no one wants your stupid flowers,” Simmons replied quickly, aggravated, earning another shocked gasp from the pink soldier. Simmons paid him no mind but took a step forward, as if he was halfway on his way to follow Matthews.

Donut tilted his head, suddenly understanding that the topic had moved on from his flowers (sadly). “Do you know why Matthews crying?”

“Shit,” Simmons muttered, rubbing his neck. He let out a sigh before continuing, “Donut, have you heard about Team Gold’s progression after we returned?”

“Oh, yeah, Tucker said they sucked. He even said they did worse than Grif on his first day of Grifball training – which is not a nice thing to say by the way – but I disagreed, and Sarge backed me up! He said that literally was not physical possible.”

It sounded pretty bad when it was sad out loud. Simmons sighed before replying, “Yeah, you summed it up – they suck. Not _that_ bad, but… Look, Grif think that’s his fault –“

Donut tilted his head thoughtfully. “Well, he is their Captain, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he should demote himself!” Simmons said, stomping his foot. Grif had not come so far only to let himself fall back into his lazy ways – well, _lazier_ ways. At least the responsibility of being a Captain had made Grif leave his bed. Eventually, at least. If he returned to being a Private, he would just skulk around all day, avoiding practice. Which meant Simmons had to chase after him all day. And honestly, Simmons had better things to do.

Donut gasped loud enough to keep the drama to a level of a soap opera. “Grif is doing what?! Now that isn’t right!”

“Exactly!” Simmons exclaimed, spreading out his arms in relief, now when someone else was following his line of thought. Even if that person was Donut.

The pink solider nodded with enthusiasm, all thoughts about flowers apparently forgotten. “While I can understand that some positions can be tiring, I say that sometimes you just have to suck it up and take what you are given! Who knows – if he just put some work into it, he might end up enjoying it.”

Simmons took a note of never following Donut’s line of thought. “Yes. Wait no. Well, he could at least improve himself. I keep telling him – he can’t just quit everything he starts!”

Donut froze, obviously in deep thoughts, and then he held up a finger as if a light bulb was hovering over his helmet. “Wait, does this mean I’ll be the new Captain?” he asked with excitement in his voice.

Simmons mentally decided that he did not want to see Donut as a Captain (he could already hear Donut order his men to take the other team hard and quickly) and backtracked immediately. “Uhh… I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Are you sure?” Donut asked, his visor sparkling with excitement over the possibilities that could be given to him. “Grif said you guys suck but they chose you anyways, and if we are talking about guys that suck, I think I qualify! We’re all in this together, right! That’s how Red Team works.”

“I guess…” Simmons shook his head to get his thoughts back on track. “But shouldn’t we focus on the task of not letting Grif quit?”

“Well, maybe he hasn’t. Maybe Matthews was crying for another reason. I remember the last time Grif rejected the idea of promoting him.” Donut shook his head in pity. “Poor lad was man enough to cry that day.”

“Ah, this is bad. I have to go talk with Kimball, see if I can get her to postpone Grif’s demotion, threaten him with dish duty instead or something. Have him train with Sarge until he changes his mind… It could work….” Simmons’ feet had already begun to move by themselves, taking him in the direction of the office as his head mused over his ideas.

In fact, he was so lost in thoughts that he bumped directly into Bitters who had come out from nowhere. The young lieutenant had been walking so quickly and forcefully that he nearly shoved Simmons over with his shoulder.

When Simmons regained his stance, he looked down at Bitters in bewilderment. “Have you seen Grif?” he asked, knowing that if Matthews knew about Grif’s deal then there was the chance that Bitters knew as well.

“Yes,” Bitters answered with a light shrug. “You fucked up, by the way.”

“So you know it too?”

Bitters’ shoulder rose into a defensive stance. “Not like he was going to tell us about it.” He paused for a second before continuing, “He doesn’t – he never cared. So whatever.”

“God, you’re just as oblivious as Grif.” Simmons resisted the urge to face-palm. “He is quitting because he cares!”

Even though they were both wearing helmets, Simmons could literally see how Bitters set his jaw. The Lieutenant crossed his arms. “You all proved you didn’t give a shit when you left.”

It took two seconds where Simmons had dropped his jaw to the point where he looked like a fish out of water before he managed to reply. “ _That_ ’s what you told yourself? Holy crap, you share Grif’s stupidity as well.”

Bitters took a step backwards by the sudden insult but quickly composed himself. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

Simmons mirrored the Lieutenant’s position and crossed his arms as well. He let out a snort. “You know, for two lazy assholes you both put a lot of effort into seeming like you don’t care.”

There was a long pause where Bitters seemed almost hesitant, but then he asked, his tone wary, “Did you just call me an asshole?”

Realizing his mistake, Simmons opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before coming to the most logical conclusion. “…force of habit. Point still is he is quitting for your sake, to give your team a better chance at survival, which you obviously need.”

 “We didn’t ask him to!” Bitters snarled. As the Lieutenant leaned slightly forwards to start a shouting match, Simmons realized Grif had not taught his men the importance of personal space.

However, the Captain held his head high. He knew how to deal with Grif (though that had taken years of practice) and so he knew how to deal with Bitters. “When has Grif ever done something when people asked him to? That’s right – never! You should know him that well by now, Bitters.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that quitting is a pretty shitty thing to do.” Bitters had lowered his voice slightly, as if Simmons had defeated him with his previous statement.

“Oh, no arguments from me here,” Simmons told him. He then lowered his voice slightly, as if the comment was meant for only himself to hear, but it could not avoid Bitters’ ears. “But if you wanted him to stay, you could have acted like it.” He then cleared his throat, raising his voice again. “Would have saved me the pain of dealing with a moody Grif – who, for your information, is not easy to get along with.”

“This shit isn’t my fault,” Bitters replied quickly with an unwavering voice.

“But you want to fix it?” Simmons did not sound curious – instead, it was more like the sentence was a mix between a question and a statement. The Captain eyed Bitters carefully.

There was a long pause where Bitters was looking at his feet. Then his head snapped upwards, his shoulder obviously tensed up, and he spoke slowly, “I don’t give a shit.”

Simmons could not help but snort. “Grif’s set a real example for you.”

Bitters let out this weird sound, like a bitter chuckle mixed with a snort. “Exactly.” Then he turned around on his heel, walking out of the hall with a quick pace and leaving a stunned Simmons behind.

It was first the moment that the door slammed closed behind Bitters that Simmons breathed out slowly. He then muttered under his breath. “Goddamn it, Grif.”

The maroon soldier turned around when someone sniffed loudly behind him. To no one’s surprise, it was Donut who was busy trying to wipe a tear away from his eye, only to be stopped by the visor. “That was such an emotional speech, Simmons.”

“No, Donut, we are not getting a weekly heart-to-heart Red group meeting!” Simmons replied immediately, as he knew the pink soldier was going to bring it up in a matter of seconds.

“Aw.” Donut deflated to the point where you could imagine him pouting. “No one cares about team dynamics anymore.”

* * *

Bitters realized how badly he had screwed up hours later. He had been planning on heading to his quarters in order to find some peace and quiet to kill his headache – only to hear Matthews’ muffled wailing the moment he stood outside the door. Bitters sighed, turned around, and spend the next hour walking around aimlessly.

It was not really like he had to hide in order to avoid work. In fact, at the moment he had no superior watching him. Which turned out to be the problem.

Bitters tried to walk away this weird knot in his belly. He was not sure if it was anger or guilt, but he was pretty sure it could be solved either way if he faced Grif – just too bad he really did not want to do that right now.

So Bitters settled with the thing that always helped him through tough times.

He headed for the food stash.

But the time he had moved away the crates that shielded the treasured box, it was no longer there. It was not even because the box was empty – it was just gone.

Bitters stared at the empty spot on the floor. Then he noticed how the surrounded crates were slightly out of places and all bore some light scrape marks on them…

…as if a wheelchair had bumped into them.

Bitters sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to deal with the fact that his promise of treats was now gone.

It was a hard thing to deal with.

His backup plan was to check up on whether Matthews had run out of tears. He was not supposed to think further about this – he did not want to. There was nothing he could do about it anyway, which meant that sort of work would just be wasted. He should just push the thoughts away.

Yet, a voice from the back of his head kept telling him that maybe he should talk with Captain Grif.

When Jensen appeared from out of nowhere, that thought was spoken out loud. With a lisp.

“Bitters, you have to talk to Ca-“ She cut herself off as she became aware of what the problem actually meant. There was a short sigh before she removed the title, “Grif.”

“I’m fine.” It was by pure instinct that Bitters immediately tried to shake her off. He even did it quite literally, as she had put her hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, this isn’t about you,” she replied quickly, but then corrected herself. “ Or, well, I suppose it is, but that’s not why I am here. This is about me. Or more specific – it’s about Matthews.”

Of course it was. Bitters would not be surprised if Matthews’ sobs were loud enough to reach the women’s dorm. “Look, if you can’t get him to stop crying, just let him have a meltdown in the corner of a room or something.”

Jensen smacked her lips. “He did have his meltdown. In fact, he’s had two.”

It was more of a surprise that he had not reached three yet. And that Bitters had avoided seeing it all up close. “So what’s the problem?”

“Weeeell…” Jensen drew out the word a bit too long, twiddling her thumbs. “He’s entered the next stage.”

Bitters frowned. “What stage?”

* * *

There were some questions that kept Simmons up at night. Questions like why they were here, why he had been unlucky enough (despite Tucker’s protests of this being the exact opposite) to receive a squad consisting entirely of girls, and how in the world did CPR heal a bullet wound in the head.

And, of course, how it was that every time Grif made a mistake, then why did Simmons have to pay for it?!

“I’m just saying, sir, if you accept and become my Captain, you won’t regret it, sir. I’ll follow you to the end, sir.”

Simmons blinked, slowly tearing himself away from his lament, and he looked down at Matthews whose visor was fixated fully on the Captain.

“Didn’t you say the same thing to Grif?” Simmons could not help but ask and regretted it the moment Matthews began to sniff again.

He was still fighting a battle against the tears, and bringing up Grif’s name was not making it easier. “I am unworthy of my yellow stripes. But I swear I’ll wear your colors with pride, sir, all the-“ He paused and tilted his head as he slowly eyed Simmons’ armor. “Red-ish-ness?”

“Maroon,” Simmons corrected him stiffly and realized with horror that he was beginning to sound like Donut. And Grif. Even Tucker. It seemed like colorblindness was still following them around, even with Sister gone.

“Oh.” Matthews gave himself a moment to imagine himself in the color, frowning slightly, but then his voice returned with glee. “But I’ll wear it with my head held high, sir, even if it’s the pink version of it!”

“Wha – maroon isn’t pink!”

Matthews nodded, a bit too forbearing. “Of course, sir.”

It turned that Matthews could grow on you. Unlike Donut’s flowers. More like bacteria living on the pack of bagels Grif had unsuccessfully tried to hide under his bed.

Half an hour later, Matthews was still talking.

“But I’ll continue all the duties that Captain Grif trusted me with, sir, like, like stealing the burritos and record your journal entries, and, uh, I can sort your logs over our training sessions. I can do it after date or alphabetically if you name your logs after which sort of mistake your squad made.”

Simmons blinked again, this time to process what Matthews was really saying. “You… You appreciate the effectivity of an organized system?”

“Of course, sir!” Matthews nodded enthusiastically.  “Not only does it serve as the first step of an improvement plan, but it is also an enjoyable way of spending your spare time!”

Simmons could feel something swelling in his chest. “So true.”

Behind them, in the background, in the other end of the area, Jensen and Bitters had placed themselves on some crates, watching the scene. Bitters leaned slightly backwards, trying to find a comfortable position, while Jensen was crouched forward, staring intensely at Matthews.

“He needs to go,” she declared darkly, not even turning her head to face Bitters.

The other Lieutenant was glad that this visor hid his grin. Still, he could not entirely conceal the amusement in his voice as he asked, “Do you feel threatened by Matthews?”

“No.” Her snort sounded somewhat insecure. “Of course not. _I_ ’ve already proved my worth to Captain Simmons. And I wasn’t exactly the only one competing for the title.”

“Yeah, because you all have a thing for cyborgs. That’s what you get when you have a squad filled with girls.”

“Shut up.” The helmet could not hide Jensen’s blush. Bitters was not even sure how it physically possible (but since when has that shit mattered anyway?) but he could literally feel the heat radiating from her face. “And the cyborg thing _is_ cool. I bet you haven’t even seen his metallic arm, it’s _super_ sophisticated…”

Bitters rolled his eyes, happy for the brief distraction. “So back to the War of Kissasses? How do we get rid of Matthews?”

“That’s a pretty wrong way to phrase it when you are carrying a gun.” They both looked down at their laps, just to clarify they were both still visibly armed. They were not even sure why they were always holding a weapon, especially after Bitters’ incident only a few days prior. “But the answer is pretty simple: we get Grif his title back.”

Bitters snorted, leaning his head back. “And how do you do that?”

Jensen shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Katie –“ Bitters began with a sigh in his voice.

“But Captain Simmons does.” Jensen’s voice was so smug that Bitters climbed down the crate in defeat.

“ _Fine_. Whatever. I’ll do it. If you distract Matthews.”

Jensen followed him down, a few steps behind him. “Why is that necessary?”

“Because if I have to face Grif, I can’t bring him along. He’ll just start crying again.”

“Fair point.” Jensen agreed. Bitters stopped to remain standing in a shadow, but Jensen continued forward in a great pace to push her way in between Matthews and Captain Simmons.

 She grabbed the Private by the arm. “Matthews, I need your help.”

He thrusted his head up, seeming even more excited than he was a second ago where he had been talking enthusiastically with Captain Simmons (and he had been practically bouncing with happiness then). “Really? With what?”

Jensen tried to drag him away, unable to stop herself from sending her Captain an apologetic glance every few seconds. “Uh, something important. Really important. I’m sure General Kimball would be pleased if you agreed to help.”

“Well, I can’t disappoint the General.”

“Right, let’s go.” She finally managed to tear him away from Simmons’ near presence and she looked over her shoulder in her hurry to call out, “See you-“

She was cut off by a waving Matthews. “We’ll see you later, Captain Simmons!” He completely failed to notice the dark stare from Jensen as she disappeared with him in tow.

Simmons would have been worried by the whole display, had he not noticed Bitters skulking in the shadow. Crossing his arms, Simmons patiently waited as the Lieutenant shuffled his way towards him.

It took a second before Bitters lifted his head, awkwardly shifting his feet. “So… Yeah… I want to fix it.”

Simmons snorted, pretty satisfied with himself and his amazing convincing skills. “About time. Grif’s solution so far has been to lock himself up in his room. Which, unfortunately, is my room as well, which he seems to have forgotten. Jerk. So if you could get him to open the door before nighttime, that would be great.”

“So you want me to what? Knock on his door and apologize?”

Simmons shook his head. “No, that’s how normal people would do it. That won’t work here. And if you try knocking you should definitely bring some snack cakes with you. That if you haven’t emptied his stash already.”

Bitters took a step backwards, alarmed in case Simmons was going to tell. Not that he cared if Grif knew, but if Kimball found out about Grif’s stashes and decided to confiscate them or something, then Bitters would have messed up Grif’s life even more. “How did you…?”

“That’s how Grif deals with problems as well,” Simmons revealed casually, as if this was a well-known fact. “The time Sarge told him his sister died? His emotional eating got so bad, he managed to raid the Blues MRE’s. Might be the first time he ever successfully invaded their base.”

Bitters was visibly taken back by that information. “Grif has a dead sister?”

Simmons froze, realizing his slip-up. He chose his next words carefully. “Not if you ask him. Maybe you could convince him to see Dr. Grey while you are there? Or maybe you shouldn’t – we are trying to make him stop being mad at you, after all.”

“I’m not gonna touch that subject.”

Simmons nodded as he had lost count on how any arguments he had accidently started with Grif due to this subject. “That is understandable, though you might be the only one able to convince him since you actually have experience with the doctor’s meetings.”

Bitters took one step backwards, his armored body tensing up into a defensive position. “Why do you know such things?” He remembered asking the same question to Katie only days prior. Perhaps he was not the only Lieutenant who shared personality traits with their Captain.

Simmons tried to wave it off, but his voice turned one pitch squeakier. “I just overheard Jensen talk about it. Overhearing conversations is not creepy – it is a very natural and common accident.”

“Right.” Bitters snorted, but decided not to push it further. It was, after all, involving a subject he did not want to speak about.  “So I have to refill his stash?”

“Well, it is Tuesday, which means it’s your weekly cafeteria raid.” When Bitters tilted his head, Simmons had to reveal just where he knew that sort of information from. “Grif always leaves his plans out in the open – he is too lazy to hide them.”

Bitters looked at the clock that his helmet displayed. It would still be some hours before the place was empty enough for him to break into, and it would not be an easy task when he was by himself, but, well, he did not really have a choice. “Fine, I’ll-“

“You do realize Grif has not officially been demoted yet?”

It took a moment before Bitters realized what that meant.

* * *

Someone knocked on Grif’s door.

“Simmons, for the last fucking time – just fuck off.”

It knocked again.

“Seriously, do you know how long it took to get off this fucking chair?! I am not coming over!”

And again.

“I’m gonna break my left leg just to give you phantom pains.”

With more force this time.

“Pick the lock or sleep with Donut! …You know what I mean!”

“You suck.” Even from the other side of the wall, the struggle of getting from the bed back to the chair could be heard along with the numerous of swearwords. It took a good minute before Grif finally reached the door, and when he tore it open, he was not looking happy.

 “You – “ When Grif realized he was not looking at Simmons, he blinked. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“It’s Tuesday,” Bitters said with a light shrug. He was trying to make it sound like him being here was a natural thing, but it was hard to ignore the fact that no one had showed up for raids the two previous weeks due to warnings from Kimball. “So mess hall raid?”

Grif crossed his arms and snorted. “Great attendance. Melts my heart. What, did Matthews’ kissassing rub off on you?”

Bitters rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to look down at his (former) Captain who looked weirdly small in his wheelchair. “I figured it was time for a refill.”

“Yeah?” Grif narrowed his eyes. “And how did you know that? You totally stole from my stash again.”

“I didn’t eat anything,” Bitters quickly defended himself, and he felt rather good about the fact that he was speaking the truth.

Grif rolled his eyes. “’course you didn’t. I’d already left with the stash. Real self-control there, Bitters.”

Bitters shifted his feet, looking at the wall behind Grif. He hesitated before he decided to go with Simmons’ plan. “You’re still officially our Captain, you know.”

“Yeah, ‘till tomorrow when Kimball announces it. Enjoy your nerd-free time before Simmons gets his hands on you.”

“Well, you’re still our Captain and today is Tuesday, so…” Bitters tried to not sound desperate. Or hopeful. Or just showing any emotion at all. The back of his head kept telling him to leave it alone, to let Grif deal with his own goddamn decision. Bitters could care less. It was Grif who had chosen to leave. But Bitters also knew who his team was going to blame when they heard of this. And honestly, just the thought of another training session without their real Captain did not sound that enjoyable.

“Jesus Christ, Bitters,” Grif snapped and pointed at his bandaged leg. “You shot me, remember? I’m on sick leave.”

“I’ll push your chair.” Did he sound like Matthews? He hoped not. He had expected that sort of behavior to be physical painful.

Grif squinted in suspicion, immediately catching the weird way his (former) Lieutenant was acting. “What are you fishing for, Bitters? You want tacos, you go steal them yourself.”

Bitters clenched his fists. “I’m trying to apologize,” he snarled.

Grif blinked, looking a bit too surprised for Bitters’ liking. He had, after all, tried his best. “Holy shit, you are worse at that than me!” Grif exclaimed, sounding a bit impressed, actually.

The last comment did manage to soften Bitters’ expression just a little bit. For a second there was a small smile but it was quickly replaced by a frown. Not that it mattered, since he was still wearing a helmet. “I didn’t mean for you to quit.”

“Right. That was obvious. You are very good at expressing your thoughts,” Grif said with sarcasm dripping from his tongue.

“So that’s why you quit? Because I didn’t give a shit.”

“Bitters, you’re a slacker. I’m a slacker. I have nothing against not giving a shit. If anything, I hate shit. Especially bullshit.” He wheeled backwards and gestured for the Lieutenant to follow him. So far no one had been walking the hallway to overhear their conversation (and sorta argument) but that had been pure luck. Bitters stepped inside and the sight of the mess did not surprise him. He had been here before. He made himself comfortable leaning against the wall, and when Grif finally managed to close the door, he turned his chair around to look him straight in the eyes as he told him, “I quit because you guys suck.”

“Thanks,” Bitters snorted, like that statement did not hurt. Which it didn’t. At least not a lot.

Grif waved him off. “Oh, don’t act pissy. I suck too, so I figured that was a bad combination. So to make you all suck less, I’m going to give you to a Captain who doesn’t suck.”

Bitters took off his helmet to show him just how hard he dead-panned as he slowly said, “So you’re going to give us to Captain Simmons?”

“Okay, I’m giving you to someone who s _ucks less_. Just a little bit. Don’t tell Simmons.” Grif shot him a wary glare before leaning back to relax in his chair. “But at least his team has won a game of catch the flag.”

Bitters grimaced. “That game sucks.”

“You know what’s worse than playing it? Watching you guys play it.  That is _the_ most painful thing. And all my years in Blood Gulch were basically one long game of catch the flag.”

“Did you ever even win?” Bitters asked a bit too smug to truly sound curious.

Grif knew Tucker must have fed them all stories of how hard the Blue Team had beaten them in Valhalla. And they probably had not put emphasis on the fact that Wash was a fucking Freelancer and that was fucking unfair. Especially when Red Team was stuck with Sarge as their strategist. “Hey, we still managed to beat your score. Which really isn’t that impressive, so fuck you guys.”

“We _could_ have won. Probably. If we tried.”

Grif had to fight back a snort. “Yeah, so why didn’t you?” he asked with his arms crossed.

“Because you pissed us off.” When that comment earned him a raised eyebrow, Bitters sighed and corrected himself. “Me off.” His eyes flickered around the room as he continued to admit, “And I probably didn’t boost the mood.”

“No, you are just a ray of sunshine, Bitters.” Grif grumbled something under his breath before exclaiming, “How the fuck did I piss you off?!”

“You _left_ ,” Bitters shouted back at him in the same sour voice. “That’s just as shitty as quitting.”

Grif’s hand shook, like he was forcing himself not to flip the finger or make a fist. “For fuck’s sake! I wasn’t expecting a ‘thank you’ but this is just bullshit. Look, I grew tired of having a leader who doesn’t care whether I died or not. Figured giving a shit about you guys was like flipping Sarge off or something. So yeah, I didn’t bring you along to get shot – boo-fucking-hoo. Do you know how much I wished Sarge would ignore me like that? Would have saved me some near-death experiences.  And sure, I’m quitting, not a big surprise for some, but this way you guys can’t do fucking worse. Because I’m about to think that’s impossible.”

After that speech, they both fell quiet since that had been just a bit too emotional. Like, real feelings and shit. Grif blamed the painkillers.

Bitters shifted his feet and lifted his glance from the floor. “And if we don’t want you to quit?”

Grif sighed and fiddled with the armrest of his chair. “Then you have to suck it up, ‘cause Kimball was gonna fire me anyway. Being Captain was my job and I fucked up. Now I’m just gonna be like Donut or something. Simmons will teach you how to not suck entirely, you’ll _maybe_ catch the flag and hopefully you won’t all get shot the first minute you step into actual battle.”

“We are better than you think.”

Grif actually let out a snort this time. “Yeah? ‘cause that sure isn’t what I saw, Bitters.”

Bitters was quiet for a moment where he looked at his helmet as he turned it around in his hands. “So if we won the training session tomorrow, Kimball would let you stay?”

It was not because Grif did not appreciate the attempt. Because first of all, just to receive an attempt of something from Bitters was a huge thing. For the Lieutenant to actually put so much thought into it was almost heartwarming. But Grif remembered just why he had made this deal with Kimball in the first place, and things had not really changed since then. “Look, it’s a bit too late for that. Already signed the papers and that stuff. Well, there weren’t any actual papers, but you get the point.”

Bitters’ expression cracked just enough to show that he had counted on Grif’s changing his mind. “So tomorrow won’t matter?”

Grif smacked his lips. “Nope. Way to make that game even more useless. Like, why do people even want the fucking flag? They could have used something to make it worthwhile, like tacos or shit, but no. Why the hell should you go through all the trouble just to get a stupid flag?”

“To burn it,” Bitters muttered darkly, earning a strange look from Grif. The Lieutenant shrugged. “That’s what I would do.”

Grif’s face split into one wide grin. “Bitters, you just gave me the most beautiful idea.” He rubbed his hands in glee and smugly added, “It _is_ Tuesday after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, I can’t spoil anything, but this chapter serves as such a great foreshadow for an upcoming story of mine. Not a sequel to this by any way, but for any reader who enjoyed my Grimmons story will be excited for this one. I can’t wait to show it to you, but this story needs to be finished first.   
> Don’t get me wrong. Matthews adores Grif. But Matthews is also a kissass, which meant sucking up to Simmons was pure instincts.  
> So this story had been prolonged with an extra chapter since this one turned out way longer than expected. It was also way harder to write. Sorry for the delay.  
> Also, since this story was updated I posted another RvB story called “Seeing Red (‘Cause That’s a Lot of Blood)” so if you haven’t checked it out, feel free to do so. Lots of Red Team feels.


	7. The Giant Flag of Maverickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grif fucks up, Bitters fucks up, and Simmons gets the blame.

“Why are we doing this again?” Bitters asked. It was a fair question, seeing how they had spent the remaining time of the evening inside Grif’s room (ahem, which he also shared with Simmons, resulting in the cyborg pounding on the door numerous times, shouting insult through the walls. To be honest, Bitters had considered letting him in, but Grif had been busy with a pre-raid nap, and Bitters could not exactly open the door without Grif’s permission. Right? Simmons had seemed honestly surprised and strangely pleased the moment the door had opened, and Grif and Bitters had stormed past him with a rushed “Hey, Simmons! See ya later, Simmons!”) and now he was pushing Grif’s wheelchair down the darkened hallways.

Grif leaned back in his chair, enjoying to have someone pushing without that someone (cough, Simmons, cough) constantly bitching about it. “Bitters, I’m gonna give you a piece of wisdom. Work is worth it if it results in much less work in the near future.” 

“Huh.” Bitters slowed down slightly as if pushing the chair was tiring – which was in fact the truth, but seeing how he had been the cause of the chair in the first place he probably had no right to complain.

“Also, work can be worth it if it keeps you alive. Only reason why I bother carrying around my gun. These things are heavy.”

Bitters suddenly became aware of his own rifle that was secured to his back. “ _Why_ are we even bringing weapons? Not like we are going to shoot them.”

“We have to make this look serious, Bitters. We’re making a point.”

“We are burning a flag. That’s usually pretty on point.”

Grif nodded in something that looked like excitement. “Should stir up some people. Teach the motherfucking flag a lesson. Do you know how many times I almost got shot because Sarge ordered me to capture the goddamn flag? A lot. And I’m not just talking about the Blues – Sarge would fucking shoot at me if I didn’t go to fucking Blue Base to get shot.”

“Sucks to be you.”

Grif’s face darkened. “Yeah, Bitters. It sucks to get shot. Take fucking notes of that.”

“Lesson already learned.” If Bitters had not been wearing his helmet, it would have been clear that his expression was even more sober than Grif’s. But his voice matched it, and Grif became aware that he was touching a sore subject.

“Huh. Good,” he replied, somewhat hesitant. At least with Bitters behind him, they were spared from awkward eye-contact. “So who popped a bullet up your ass?”

Bitters’ reply came quickly. “They didn’t.”

Even without the eye-contact, Grif was currently trying not to squirm. This was emotional and, well, dark, and they had already had one heart-to-heart this evening. “Good for you.”

“Not really.”

Then came the awkward silence where Grif made sure not to ask who had been shot then, and where they both made sure to keep their gaze straight ahead. The hallways were almost empty, except for the regular patrols that would guard the halls for some fucking reason. The primary reason was probably just because Kimball had told them to do so.

Bitters stopped pushing as they reached the end of the hallway. They both knew that on the other side of the door, they would enter a monitored area. “So how are we gonna do this?” Bitters asked, thankfully changing subject.

Grif put a hand on his chin. “I was thinking strategy 4B.”

There was a moment of silence before Bitters asked, “So we need to pick up four more men?”

Grif blinked. “What? No – there’s not enough time…” His frown softened into a smug expression. “Wait, Bitters, did you actually read up on my strategies?”

“Uh…”

“You disappoint me, Bitters. That’s something a kissass would do. Not cool.” Grif was wearing a big, amused grin now, but Bitters was still standing behind him.

The Lieutenant let go of the chair to rub the back of his neck. “Shut up. Kimball was threatening us with dish duty if we got caught again.”

“Oh, quit shaking. I’m not mad or anything. In fact, I was actually hoping you would be the one to show your new Captain the ropes. The tattered and very weak ropes, but, you know, I did put some work in those plans.”

Perhaps it was a bad thing that Bitters was standing behind him. Grif had to stop himself from looking over his shoulder to see whether Bitters was still alive, due to his sudden silence. Finally, the Lieutenant cleared his throat. “So, you meant strategy 4F?”

“Right. 4F. Could work. If we find that tennis ball.”

“I feel like I should point out that you are still in a wheelchair.”

“And whose fault is that Bitters?”

Bitters sighed deeply and loudly.

Grif figured that was answer enough and said, “Just look at it as an extra tool. We can use me to run over our enemies or something.”

“Which enemies? We know the people who are on patrol.”

Grif nodded, staring at the closed door in front of them. “Exactly. We’re alone in this, Bitters. Two mavericks against the world.”

Catching up on the amused tone in his voice, Bitters had to ask, “You’re really enjoying this?”

Grif shrugged. “I had a shitty week.”

The hall was weirdly quiet when none of them were speaking. Most of the base had to be asleep by now. Bitters breathed out, “Yeah. Me too.”

Suddenly, the noise almost echoing against the walls, Grif clapped his hands together. “Then let’s get to work.” The moment the words left his mouth, he winched. “Oh god, that sounded so wrong. I need to bleach my tongue or something… Must have been the painkillers.”

* * *

And when the work began, it was glorious enough to be worthy of dramatic sneaky music playing in the background. Unfortunately, such music would totally reveal their presence, and that was why they worked in silence.

But as it turned out, something was needed before the work could begin.

“Okay, where do we find a tennis ball?”

“The equipment closet,” Bitters responded dryly. “Which we apparently need a tennis ball to reach.”

Grif scowled. “How ironic.”

“Actually, it’s more annoying.”

“Well, shit. Bitters, go find a tennis ball.”

The Lieutenant stepped back to cross him arms. “But you just said we have no idea of where to find them!”

“That’s how delegations works, Bitters! You give someone else the orders that suck!”

Bitters opened his mouth, closed his mouth, opened it to grumble something that Grif could not hear, and finally he sighed. “Fine… Uh, your wheels are made by rubber? I think.”

“Hmm… Would save us the extra work trying to find a ball. Hey, if my chair breaks, you have to carry me.”

Bitters sighed.

* * *

The plan was rather simple – get to the equipment shack without being spotted by the patrols or getting caught by the surveillance cameras.

You know, pretty simple. But it did require some work.

“Okay, careful. Don’t fucking tip me over! Oh, shit!” Grif clung to the pipe running up the wall in order to keep himself (and his chair) from falling to the ground. With only three wheels left on the chair, it was no longer able to carry Grif’s weight – something that did indeed require some strength.

Realizing his method somehow worked, Grif held on even tighter and called out, “Okay, get going. And don’t fucking miss.”

“Or what?” Bitters asked, turning his hand upwards in order to look at the small rubber wheel he had taken from the chair. It was big enough to fill his palm, and hopefully it should bounce off rather well.

“Or we accept dish duty and you’re stuck on Simmons’ squad. No pressure.”

Bitters grunted something in reply and took his stance on the other side of the door. When it opened, he leaned in to see the camera on the top of the wall in the middle of the hall, placed so there was no way they could get to the other side without getting filmed. To make things worse, it was one of the few cameras that were always turned on, unlike some of the other areas where cameras would turn on and off every ten seconds in order to save power.

Taking in a deep breath, Bitters moved his arm backwards, aimed, and-

The wheel hit the camera with enough force to push it to the side, causing it to film the wall and leaving half of the path unsupervised.

The wheel bounced back on the floor and continued to roll its way back to the intruders. They both turned their heads in order to see it roll undisturbed back the way they had come from.

“Uhm, I suggest you fetch that,” Grif said, slowly losing his grip on the pipe. “But yeah, good throw.”

* * *

“Your wheel is squeaking.”

“What?”

“Your wheel is squeaking,” Bitters said, somehow with even more irritation in his voice.

Grif threw up his hands. “I know that! I’m sitting right next to it! Don’t tell me you’ve brought along oil for some fucking reason – that’d be something Donut would do.”

“I’m saying –“

In fact, Bitters was not saying anything because in that exact moment the door opened behind them.

The patrol, consisting of two rebel soldiers, came walking down the hall, quietly bickering about when they could go the fuck to sleep, when the light flickered above them.

They froze in the middle of their tracks. “That’s weird. You think the power supply is running low again?”

“Nah, man, this is Armonia. Probably a ghost or something.”

“You really think so?”

“It’s the most logical explanation.”

Apparently it was, and most definitely when an empty wheelchair suddenly made its way down the hallway, its squeaking echoing against the walls.

“Oh shit.”

They both raised their rifles but backed away on the same time, as if unsure whether to attack or run away.

The decision was made when a ghost-like voice called out, “I’m hunti- _haun_ ting you… Boooh… Something.”

“Holy crap!”

The two soldiers turned around on their heels and ran as fast as their legs could carry them. The door on the other end of the hallway opened, revealing Bitters who went to fetch the wheelchair and Grif who was sitting on the ground close enough to the entrance to be able to reach up and flick the light switch.

“Nice,” Grif said and accepted the hand that helped him up. He even managed to walk the few steps to the wheelchair, only limping slightly. The wound was basically healed by now, but why put stress on it (and why not avoid all kind of stress in the first place?), so Grif had learned to appreciate how he could be sitting down the entire day. “Should be three minutes before they return with backup. Should be four minutes before someone calls them paranoid idiots and tell them to stop watching horror movies before patrol. Let’s get the fuck out of there.”

* * *

In fact, the wheelchair proved most useful when they were reaching one of the final hallways.

“Just why is the equipment shack more secure than the fucking mess hall?!”Grif muttered angrily as he glanced up at the camera. The light switch from red to green with only a few seconds interval.

“Maybe because the shack contains weapons.”

“Yeah, shitty training weapons. It’s not the fucking armory!” He let his arm fall, realizing shouting probably won’t help them in the long run, and he went back to glaring daggers at the camera instead. “How the fuck do we get past that shit?! No way any of us can run that fast.”

That was very true – considering the fact they were the two soldiers that never put any effort into the obstacle courses.

They stared at the camera for a minute, realizing the light was basically fucking blinking like it had some dirt in its eye.

“I think I have an idea.”

As it turned out, none of them were able to run fast enough. However, if you pushed the wheelchair with enough force, you could make it to the other end of hallway before the camera turned on again.

Had the camera been recording the entire time, Church would later have been able to watch the glorious video of Grif grasping the armrests as Bitters ran up and let go of the chair, sending it flying down the hall. It was fast enough for Grif to be unable to stop it as the distance between himself and the door became less and less. “Oh shit!”

The door did not open fast enough, and Grif crashed directly into it. “Ow.”

He somehow managed to get himself off it, placing himself on the ground, and pushed it back to Bitters. The Lieutenant was having a harder time completing the tactic, as he had to run up and then in the process throw himself onto the moving chair.

It somehow worked. Well, it did, until the wheel that had previously taken off and put back on suddenly fell off, resulting in Bitters crashing to the floor. “Crap.”

“Hey, careful with that – I was only allowed to rent it!”

Well, at least they made it across the hall.

* * *

“I can’t believe this actually worked,” Grif declared out loud. He was actually more than a bit shocked with how easy they had made it through their obstacles. Especially since this was fucking Bitters who had not even known when to stay fucking put instead of running to your death only some days ago.

He wrote the codeword in the door’s panel (all the Captains had been given it in order to be able to reach the equipment – thank you very much, Kimball) and when the door opened, they reached their destination. Breaking into the actual closet was easier than fucking getting to it.

As Grif wheeled his way inside (they had managed to get the wheel back on the chair again, though Grif was now tilting slightly to one side), Bitters followed him. “I have a feeling you shouldn’t be saying that yet.”

“Don’t be a pessimist, Bitters. The goal is in fucking sight.” He made his to the corner of the room, after wheeling into a training dummy that had fallen to the floor, and sure enough – a blue, a green, a red and an _orange_ flag was resting against the wall. “Okay, hand me the lighter.”

“Uhm…” Bitters was standing in the hallway, as if he did not dare to move further into the room.

Grif turned around, well, actually he turned his head since turning the chair was too much work. “You don’t smoke?” he asked, unable to hide his surprise. Though he had never actually seen the Lieutenant with a cigarette, he seemed like the type of guy who would hang out behind buildings in order to smoke in peace.

“No.” He crossed his arms and nodded accusingly in the direction of Grif. “So why didn’t you bring?”

“And give Simmons an excuse to freaking body check me? I can barely hide my packs when I have my armor on. Sarge must have installed freaking x-ray vision in him or something.”

Bitters glanced at the flags and tilted his head. “So the plan failed?” he asked, almost sounding curious in order to see if he was right on his hypothesis.

“No, Bitters. Luckily for us there are other ways to destroy a flag. Use your imagination.”

The Lieutenant finally stepped inside the room, moving closer in order to get a better look. “Can’t we just steal them?” he asked, sounding tired. To be fair, it was the middle of the night.

“Bitters, have you completely misunderstood the purpose of this mission? We are here to put an end to the game where we have to steal the fucking flag. We are here to bring freedom to us all. So, no, Bitters, we are going to rip these things to pieces.”

As he ended his speech, he reached forward to grab the flags. Unfortunately, the wheel decided it was too weak to keep supporting Grif’s weight, and when the chair became tilted, Grif accidently knocked over the flags.

And then came the chain reaction.

They both watched in wonder how the red flag fell over to slam against a cupboard from which a ball fell down, bouncing against the floor, then the wall, into the training rifles stacked against a rack, causing Bitters to back away as they fell in his direction, and the movement caused him to trip over the rolling ball on the floor, slamming into the steel hurdles standing behind him, which all proceeded to knock the next one down, until the final hurdle fell towards the door, the sharp corner hitting the door panel.

The glass surface shattered upon impact and the two soldiers watched how sparks emerged from the crack. Bitters went over to investigate and discovered that the door was indeed malfunctioning and they were now stuck in a closet. While he had expected something to go wrong, he had never dared to be this specific.

“So mission…”

“Don’t say it,” Grif snapped, both annoyed and amazed that _this_ could happen to them. “This is not _failed._ This is delayed victory. Completely different. Also, we can still destroy the flags.”

As Grif leaned down to pick them up, Bitters just watched the chaos they had created. “We’re fucking stuck.”

“So?”

“ _So?”_

Grif shrugged while trying not to fall out of his tilted chair. “Won’t be the first time I’ve napped in a closet.” Trying to make himself comfortable, he stretched out his arms over his head. “Reminds me of a time I managed a 5 hours nap in a locker back in Blood Gulch. Then Simmons found me and he had to go tell Sarge. He made me clean the base’s floors with my toothbrush as punishment. Took for fucking ever. Tough luck for Simmons, though, since I didn’t have a toothbrush. I’m sure he didn’t mind that I borrowed his.” As Bitters grimaced at that scenario, Grif nodded gravely. “That’s what I’m telling you. You sure as hell are the luckiest person on this planet to draw me as your Captain. Sarge _hates_ mavericks.”

Understanding that they were going to be stuck here for a while, Bitters took off his helmet and stared at it as he held it in his hands. “You’re pretty full of it.”

“Really? I’m sure Matthews would disagree.”

“That’s _Matthews_ ,” Bitters said distastefully.

“Huh, good point.”

They sat in silence after that, since Bitters’ tone had turned just a bit too sharp for them to continue their conversation. Grif placed the flags in his lap, fiddling with the fabric as he tried to decide how to rip it to pieces.

Bitters kept looking at his helmet, as if trying to see his own reflection in the visor.

“What you did wasn’t selfless.”

That came out of nowhere, so Grif lifted his head to look at his Lieutenant. “Huh… What?”

Still examining his helmet, Bitter began to recite: “ _Appearing just when we felt so helpless, they disappeared again in a sacrifice so selfless._ But you just dumped us.”

“Are you… Holy crap, is that Matthews’ poem?” Grif squinted in suspicion. “You totally learned it by memory. What a kissass.”

“You ordered me to,” Bitters defended himself weakly. Finally raising his head just a tiny bit, he saw Grif’s smug smile.

“And you followed orders. A kissass in disguise. I never saw the betrayal coming.”

“Shut up,” Bitters said harshly and shifted his feet.

“Alright, fine.” Grif held up his hands. “I crossed the line. No more calling you kissass. Or brownnose. Or-” Noticing Bitters cold, very cold, glare in his direction, Grif cut himself off. “My bad. Okay, so what was messed up about Matthews’ poetry? Except, you know, all of it.”

Bitters put down the helmet to pick up the red flag that had been lying on the ground. “I don’t –“ He ripped the first piece off. “-buy-“ There was another scratching sound as he continued. “-the bullshit.”

Grif paused from his own work and asked, “Are we still talking about the poem? ‘cause yeah, that’s a pile of rhyming shit.”

Bitters continued to rip the flag apart with angry motions, refusing to say more.

After watching him for almost a minute, Grif decided not to change the subject. “Look, I’m having a hard time following your thoughts, but yeah, whatever. Bitters, I promise you, next time I’m going on a suicide mission, I’ll take you with me. There. You happy?”

Bitters shrugged him off. “Better than being left behind.”

Gripping the green flag tightly, Grif told him, “You are a strange individual, Bitters. What’s with the sudden suicidal tendency?”

“I’m not-“ Bitters cut himself off and corrected it to, “We’re not as bad as you think we are.”

“You do realize I just got fired ‘cause you guys suck dick?”

Bitters waited for some seconds before he pointed out, as smugly as he could, “You said you quit.”

Rolling his eyes, Grif waved a piece of flag in his direction. “Quit, fired, whatever. Point still is, I’m fucking unemployed. Or, well, I am until Kimball figures out what we are doing. Then we’re both stuck on dish duty for so long we have to count on Felix to come back and stab us like the dickhead he is to put us out of our misery.”

“Speaking of misery-“

Grif could not help but sigh, knowing this was a classic Bitters line. “Yes, Bitters?”

“Dumping us was a pretty lame move.”

“I think you might be confusing the term ‘dumping’ with ‘selflessly giving you a chance to live’.”

Narrowing his eyes, he shot back, “By leaving us to die.”

“Hey, we came back,” Grif pointed out, because it was only fair to let them know that. “Turns out we just have a weakness for suicide missions. We should probably see someone about that.”

The last comment softened Bitters’ expression a little bit. He breathed out before grumbling, “It wouldn’t have hurt to bring us along.”

Grif snorted loudly. “Yeah, ‘cause pulling in a bunch of kids would be a great help.”

“We’re not kids.”

The reply came too quickly, so harshly, that Grif was reminded of his teenage self, when people had denied him the job he desperately needed, when people had doubted his abilities even though he was the only reason his sister and himself were still alive.

“You’re soldiers.” Grif sighed. “Yeah, I get it.” He ripped another piece of the flag, taking joy in the fact that it was green and that Tucker had won so many rounds that he definitely deserved losing his flag. “So truce? I pissed you off, you shot me. Now we’re stuck in the same boat – well, closet.”

“Fine.” It sounded like he meant it, his voice not exactly gentle but not irritated either, and so they continued their work with less tension in the air. Bitters suddenly froze, as if remembering something from an earlier conversation. “You think Kimball’s going to put us on dish duty?”

Grif huffed and pushed colorful pieces of fabric off his lap. “Well, I’m certainly going. You can probably excuse yourself by having to follow my orders.”

“Not when you’re not my Captain,” Bitters pointed out. He seemed strangely less horrified by the thought of joining Grif in the punishment than he would have expected.

“Oh,” Grif said, because Bitters was technically right. “Well, they can’t do shit without any evidence. And we skillfully avoided all cameras. They don’t have any dirt on us. That’s what I always say, Bitters – you can’t claim shit without proof.”

Bitters opened his mouth, bit his tongue, grimaced and earned a strange glare from Grif. Finally, he decided he should probably speak his thoughts out loud.

“I should probably warn you that Simmons is trying to get Doctor Grey to analyze you.”

“Huh?” Grif looked up again, and his expression revealed that he was both surprised and wary when it came to the sudden change of conversation.

Bitters shrugged as carelessly as he could. “Seemed fair to let you know. I’ve already sent you to her office once. Which was an accident,” he had to point out in case Palomo had been spreading any conspiracies.

Grif gripped the pole of the flag tighter, hesitating. Licking his lips and scolding himself for not bringing any snacks with him, he sighed and asked, “He tell you why he wants me psyco-analyzed?”

“You have a sister,” Bitters said briefly, keeping his voice empty from all sort of curiosity. He knew how it felt to have people asking into things they did not need to know shit about.

“Yeah.” Grif’s voice turned uncharacteristically cold, earning him Bitters’ full attention. “I have. And Lopez can go fuck himself, ‘cause whatever he said doesn’t mean shit. It’s fucking Spanish! And my sister can’t be killed. Did I ever tell ‘bout the time we went ice-skating? Three hours under water – came back pregnant. Lopez wouldn’t stand a chance. So my sister isn’t dead.”

“Okay.” That was all Bitters said. He did not even send Grif another glance.

Grif looked up at him, squinting with sour eyes. “Oh, don’t you go Simmons on me! I know what your ‘okay’ means. That’s like Simmons-ish for puling yourself out of an argument.”

Bitters glared back at him, not even flinching. “I mean – okay. Fine. Whatever. You’re right.”

“What, really?” Grif’s voice was now a hundred percent suspicious and he leaned slightly forward to get a better look at the young soldier. “You’re just going along with my rant?”

He shrugged.  “Can’t judge. I don’t know your sister.”

Letting out a deep breath, Grif allowed himself to lean back in his chair. “And that’s good since you and her would probably have… Oh gosh, never mind, I don’t need those mental images.” He was silent for a moment, wrapping fabric around his finger before he suddenly said, “But yeah, thanks. I guess dead relatives is just the number one subject on Chorus when it comes to things in common. Remind me never to witness a speed dating session on this planet. The topic of conversation go all the way from ‘how many Feds did you kill on the last run’ to ‘which military rank do you see yourself in in five years’?”

That earned him a snort. They could both feel the tension slowly leaving the cramped space.

“Yeah, Felix has it coming for him,” Grif finally breathed out, thinking about all the men Felix had screwed over, himself included.

“So why are we all wasting time on pointless training sessions?” Bitters were asking the right questions here. Well, not _the_ right question, but the night was still young.

“Well, tomorrow we’ll be one training session less. But I’ve heard it’s something about how they improve leadership, teamwork and the feeling of fighting for the same cause – you know, that kind of shit. Except, that doesn’t really apply to our team.”

“That’s because the training sucks.”

“I like the way you think, Bitters.” Grif managed to rip off another piece, only to realize he was only halfway through the green flag and his fingers fucking hurt. “Ah, this takes for fucking ever. How long until the others come?”

Bitters picked up his helmet to glance inside of it, looking at the numbers displayed on the visor. “Uh, it’s 2.15.”

“Meaning we have, uh…” He trailed off. The truth was that Grif was always late for their training sessions, leaving him with no clue of how when they actually began.

“Still a bit more than 4 hours,” Bitters told him, not even sounding like he was scolding him.

“Right. Enough time. More than enough. Plenty. I can even find time for a nap.” When Bitters glared at him, he let go of the idea even though it was tempting. “Fine, I’ll save that one for later.” He shifted his entire body in order to get comfortable in the chair and grinned. “Seems like we have some time to kill. So… You ever wondered why we’re here?”

“Nope.”

The flat reply took him by surprise, but Grif knew an opportunity when he saw one. He clapped his hands together. “Well, Bitters, I have a lot to teach you then.”

* * *

Matthews breathed in deeply, mentally going through his version of the dialogue before straightening out his back, and then he marched towards the group of Captains with long steps. Kimball was there as well, talking with Simmons, and Matthews tried to hold up his chin even higher.

The training session was about to start, with the soldiers slowly beginning to warm-up while the course was being prepared. But, sad as it was, Gold Team was without a Captain. The others probably believed Grif to be late, but Matthews knew the truth and that was why Kimball’s presence only made him even more anxious. Perhaps she was only there because Grif wasn’t, and then she had to be the one to give the others the news.

Clearing his throat, he gained their attention. “Uhm, we are actually missing some people.”

Church flickered to life on Tucker’s shoulder, and he snorted with crossed arms, “People failing to show up in Grif’s squad? Yeah, I’m very shocked.”

While showing up late was not punishable on Gold Team, Matthews continued, “Actually, we are kinda missing our Captain _and_ Lieutenant.”

Simmons and Kimball shared a glance, but then the maroon soldier shrugged in a bit too relaxed fashion. “They probably went out to raid the mess hall. They always do that on Tuesdays.”

“No reports about any incident in the mess hall yet,” Kimball told them all and her glance jumped from Simmons to Matthews and back again.

The Captain shrugged again. “Maybe they got away with it?”

Church made a disapproving noise. “Because Gold Team’s statistics would say that is very possible.”

Palomo appeared from out of nowhere, earning a flinch from Tucker as his voice called out: “Ooh, maybe Bitters shot him again and now he’s a fugitive. Or maybe Grif shot him as revenge.”

“Palomo, do us all a favor and shut up.”

“Can do, sir!” There was a moment of silence, but then, “For how long?”

Before Tucker could answer (and the answer was obviously until one of them died), Smith decided to join the group as well, hands empty despite hang been ordered to set up the course. “Uhm, sirs? I think you might want to see this.”

Matthews and Palomo were left behind, as Smith led the Captains and Kimball to the corner of the hall.

“It looks like someone has tried to break into the equipment room,” he explained and pointed at the panel that kept flashing on and off, displaying glitching numbers.

“Door’s jammed,” Simmons concluded shortly after trying to pry it open. Perhaps he was not the best person to try and force it open, but Caboose was too busy telling Smith that this was why he liked keys better than numbers. When Church tried to explain to him that keys were definitely outdated by now, Caboose responded that at least his keys never locked him out (which would explain why the panel on Caboose’s door was so dented – not that it mattered since they had removed the door’s locking abilities just to prevent Caboose-related incidents that surely could happen should he be left alone in a room).

Tucker took a step forward and activated his sword so quickly that Simmons had to jump backways in order to avoid getting cut. “I can take care of that! Swish!” With a surprisingly accurate attack, he cut all the way down the line that indicated where the metal sliding door would spread apart had it worked.

“Holy fuck! That almost hit me!”

At the sound of the muffled voice, they all tilted their helmets. “Grif?” Simmons was the first to call out, crossing his fingers that his ears had betrayed him.

“Uhm… Yeah?”

Too bad Simmons was never wrong (well, almost never).“What the fuck are you doing in there?!”

“Well, the panel’s smashed,” Grif explained with a voice so flat that Simmons knew that he was rolling his eyes as he spoke.

“No, I mean what were you doing in there in the first place?”

“I bet he went to find Narnia.”

“Shut up, Caboose,” Tucker barked, not even looking away from the still closed door.

The Blue soldier instead turned to Smith who would never deny him the right to speak. “I tried that too, once, but it turned out it wasn’t a closet. It was my room. And it turned out it wasn’t a talking lion. It was a dog. Which is strange since I didn’t have a dog. Maybe it wasn’t really my room.”

Simmons, deciding that was not a story he needed details about, talked to the metal door again. “How did you get stuck in a closet?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Right,” a new voice, also muffled, snorted.

“Shut up, Bitters.”

Tucker, turning off his sword to secure it to his hip, tilted his helmet. “Wait, Bitters is in there too? Wow.”

Kimball, who knew the Captain well enough to know what was about to happen, warned him with a low voice, “Tucker.”

“What? Are you expecting me _not_ to make a joke about two guys stuck in a locker?”

“I’m expecting you to help get that door open.”

Since Kimball was their leader, Tucker kept himself from complaining, and with the help of Simmons they both dug their fingers into the crack the sword had created and tore the metal pieces in each direction. They were not exactly light, and they both grunted as they strained their arm muscles.

“Maybe they moved in with each other,” Caboose suggested, watching them work with great interest.

“You can’t live in a closet,” Church told him from an aqua shoulder.

“But Tucker once told me that Donut lives in a closet.”

“That’s not what I meant, Caboose!”

The Blue soldier crossed him arms, showing how offended he felt by having his friends lie to him. “But you said that was why I couldn’t come visit him. I could have brought him fruit cake and extra coat hangers.”

With a final screeching noise as the metal was pushing along the floor, they finally got the door open, revealing Bitters sitting on a crate and Grif in his wheelchair in a room that looked like a tornado had passed through it.

Trying to ignore the growing headache the mess caused him, Simmons turned to give Grif an accusing stare with his visor. “Of course you didn’t help at all.”

“I’m in a wheelchair, you fuck.” Indeed he was – a very lopsided wheelchair. See, that was the sort of details that Simmons would not mind to hear about.

“What were you doing in here?” Kimball cut to the chase, her tone revealing that she was not too happy about the situation.

Bitters’ eyes flickered towards Grif. “Uhm…” He then quickly put on his helmet to hide even the slightest ghost of an expression.

“Night time training session?” Grif suggested as if unsure of his own words. When it sounded right, he nodded to prove that he was in fact telling the truth.

Palomo, disobeying his orders to stay behind and far away from Tucker, suddenly appeared behind the Captains, letting out a sad moan. “Aw, we never have special night time training sessions,” he complained while glancing at Tucker.

“That’s because my nighttime workout is reserved for the ladies. Bow-chica-bow-wow.” While he appreciated the opportunity to use his catchphrase, he quickly waved his disappointed Lieutenant away.

“Classy,” Simmons snorted before turning to Grif again. “Seriously, Grif?”

“What? We were just having fun.”

Tucker suddenly sounded like he had something in his throat, and he doubled over slightly as he tried to hold back his snarky comment to Grif’s statement. Church, still on his shaking shoulder, glared at Grif. “You’re giving him a hard time.”

“Okay, seriously, you’re all just teasing me now. Bow-chica-“

“Enough,” Kimball cut him off, and then put her scolding glance upon Grif. “This area is locked down during nighttime. How did you get in here?”

Both Grif and Bitters turned their head to share a glance. The Lieutenant’s visor did not give him much to work with, so Grif slowly explained himself with: “Uh… We didn’t?”

“You are making no sense,” Simmons just had to clarify, in case his idiotic teammate had not noticed. Which was probably the case.

“Actually,” Church cut in, sounding rather amused which was never a good sign. “According to the surveillance cameras, they didn’t.”

“What?” Kimball and Simmons exclaimed in unison and they both turned to look at the AI for clarification.

“Yeah, if any of you were brilliant, all-knowing AI like me, you’d be able see that Bitters and Grif were last caught by the camera outside the stalls on level 2 at…” He paused as he checked whatever he was currently seeing, being made out of numbers and all that. “00.14. Definitely outside curfew, but you can barely slap them on the wrist for that.”

“You were on a raid,” Kimball concluded, eyebrow raised behind the visor.

“Maybe they were trying to capture the flag!” Caboose exclaimed. “That’s cheating. We have not begun yet.”

“Looks like you took the wrong turn trying to find the mess hall,” Tucker snorted, though his voice did not hide the fact that he was a little bit impressed with how they had ended up here.

“Which we all know Grif can find in his sleep,” Church pointed out. “That was proven by last week’s recording of the kitchen area.” He let out an amused grunt, revealing that he was indeed playing the clip for himself at the moment. “Want me to run that video? In case you all want to see Grif sleepwalk into a wall.”

“Do we begin now?” Caboose asked but did not wait for an answer. Instead he walked straight past them all, into the deepest corner of the closet in his search for the flag. No one tried to stop him.

“How the fuck didn’t you wake up, by the way?” Tucker asked Simmons. “A sleepwalker should freak you out.”

Ignored by all of them, Caboose called out from the closet, “I found the flag.”

Church crossed his arms as he too addressed the maroon soldier. “More importantly, how didn’t you notice Grif wasn’t in your room earlier?”

Tucker nodded. “You always complain about how he snores every night.”

“I found it again,” Caboose’s voice sounded from somewhere behind Grif. “It’s very small.” 

“Wait, this isn’t my fault!” Simmons shrieked, both shocked and surprised that the blame had somehow landed on him.

Grif came to his defense. “Yeah.” Well, actually he didn’t. “And I don’t snore!”

“Yes, you do,” Simmons told him flatly. The maroon soldier was painfully aware that Grif was unable to keep quiet at night.

“No proof. I haven’t heard myself snore yet.”

“That’s because you are fucking sleeping!”

“There are a lot of flags in here.” Caboose gasped loudly. “Is it my birthday?!” 

Church let out a brief laughter and floated a bit higher in order to stare down the Red soldier. “Nice try changing subject, Simmons, but I’m sensing an accomplish here.”

“We can all have our own flag!” Caboose called out, “Smith, come choose your own.”

“On my way, sir.” The Blue soldier disappeared inside the closet as well.

Kimball turned around slightly to stare at Simmons who cowered under her glance. “I – _I_ didn’t – you can’t honestly believe-“

“Bitters, report.”

When Kimball called him out, all eyes were put on him. The Lieutenant seemed more than a little unsure with all the attention on him. He rubbed the back of his neck and revealed, “Uh... I guess Captain Simmons did suggest this was a good idea.” He actually remembered to include the title, now when Kimball was staring directly at him.

The attention did not last long, however, since all eyes now jumped back on Simmons. “No, I didn’t! I told you that you could raid the mess hall.” Simmons realized his mistake when all the glares intensified. He cleared his throat and tried to explain himself, “So they could end their stupid argument and – and Grif can stay a Captain and then I don’t have to have to listen to his pouting.”

There was an intense awkward silence until Tucker whistled and said, “Wow.”

“I know.” Church snorted. “Red Team problems. How adorable.”

“At least our problems don’t involve crazy military secrets, fucking AI’s and Freelancers!” Grif barked and glared daggers at them. “You guys’ problems have ‘Death Trap’ written all over it.”

“Yeah. Well, yours have ‘Boring’ written all over it.”

It did not seem like Church’s comment bothered Grif. The orange soldier merely shrugged. “Boring is fine. Boring is safe. I like boring.”

Smith suddenly walked back to the closet’s entrance, appearing behind Grif. “Uhm, sirs? I think that we are announcing that-“

“We have captured the flags!” Caboose yelled very loudly, and stormed out of the closet with his arms filled with small, colorful pieces of fabric. He lifted them proudly in the direction of Church.

They all stared at his treasure before going back to stare at Grif. “Huh,” Tucker said. “So that’s why you were in that.”

“This is actually the most sane reason I could come up with.” Church looked down at the soldier in the wheelchair. “Not that it does much to praise your sanity.”

Simmons sighed and tried to face-palm only for the visor to come in the way. “Really, Grif?”

Said soldier crossed his arms in defiance. “You can’t prove anything!”

“Am I getting my medal now?!”

Kimball ignored Caboose who had inched closer to her. She sighed before addressing the orange soldier. “Grif, please follow me to my office. Bitters –“ She turned towards the Lieutenant who was still relaxing on the crate but froze slightly when she declared, “You’ll start searching for thread and needle.”

“Hey, are we going to forget Simmons’ role in this?” Church asked, earning a surprised ‘eep’ from the maroon soldier. “‘cause it would seem like Red Team have been pretty naughty.”

“Shut up,” he hissed out from the corner of his mouth. “What are you – five?”

“I’m not the one getting my ass dragged to the principal’s office.”

“Technically-“

“Simmons,” Kimball cut him off sharply. “-can help Bitters. Later. For now, go assemble your squad before they start believing today’s lesson has been cancelled.”

They all headed off to fulfill their orders (Grif slowly making his way with his busted wheelchair) with the exception of Caboose who remained standing in front of the smashed closet.

“Does this mean I win?” he asked, and looked down at the bunch of fabric he was holding. “Because in that case, I already have the confetti.”

* * *

“So… Dish duty?” Grif asked the moment they were inside the office. He felt a bit too familiar with these surroundings the last week.

“Not quite,” Kimball replied as she sat down in her chair.

Mentally praying that his chair would not collapse, Grif narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “You’re going to have Wash make me run courses?”

“Tempting, but no.”

“If I admit guilt, can we keep Carolina out of this? ‘cause I like my face as it is right now.”

Kimball breathed in deeply before turning the conversation in the right direction. “You do realize you and Bitters became a security breach tonight.”

“Well…” Grif trailed off when he noticed the strange tone in her voice. “Wait, why are you sounding so happy about that?”

Kimball folded her hands. “I am very curious of how you two managed to avoid both the patrols and surveillance cameras.”

Grif mentally swore. If she was going to make him write a goddamn rapport about this, he would try to convince her that his nearly healed wound caused his fingers to cramp. Or something. Writing rapports sucked enough without them revealing the secrets that actually made his strategies work. “Look, if I swear this will never happen again – which are the exact same words I told you the last time we got caught – but third, no wait, fourth time’s the charm, right?”

“Actually, I would like to see you do it again.”

“I… Huh?”

Kimball nodded and continued, “Preferable not our own base. But if you could use the same infiltration strategies on the enemy’s compound – and, which I would like to emphasize, avoid getting stuck in a closet, it would prove most advantageous for us.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Grif held up his hands. “You want me to infiltrate the enemy’s base? That sounds like something Sarge would order me to do. Besides, it didn’t even work! And not just tonight with the closet – if my strategies work, my team wouldn’t suck so bad that I had to quit on them.”

Kimball leaned back slightly in her seat. It was clear that she eying Grif closely as she said, “Did you know Bitters came by my office yesterday? It would seem that your demotion was revealed before time.” Grif lifted his head, surprised as this was news, and when she realized she had his full attention, she told him, “He explained that he had been sabotaging Gold Team’s team spirit.”

“Saboteur of team spirit is pretty much just Bitters’ character trait. Along with severe pessimism and an extremely cool maverick attitude. You can’t really blame him.”

“According to him, this attitude has been the cause of Gold Team’s lack of obedience in the last week’s training sessions.”

“Huh.” While Grif did his best to keep his expression neutral, his eyes revealed that he was indeed impressed.

Kimball sounded like she was smiling, which was weird, since she then told him, “In fact, he suggested that the most effective solution would be for him to switch team in order to let you remain a Captain.”

Grif frowned. “Wait, you’re not seriously – Look, I never given any shit about Sarge’s orders and he hasn’t switched me out yet. I mean, he has tried to kill me, but that doesn’t really count.”

“I am not moving Bitters.”

He fell back in his chair again and it creaked in a warning manner. “Whew. Good.”

“And I’m not demoting you.”

Grif raised an eyebrow. This was not how he had expected the talk to sound like. “Is this because we actually captured the flag?”

“I think you confuse ‘capture’ with ‘destroy’ but yes.” Grif stayed quiet as he waited for her to explain, and Kimball continued, “While I am in no way encouraging destruction of our training supply, I am highly impressed with how you and Bitters managed to work together in order to infiltrate, well, infiltrate your own base, but the effort is still there.”

Grif raised his hands again, giving himself the opportunity to speak. His eyes darted around slightly. “I get what you’re hinting at. And, well, thanks. But I’m not gonna send my men out there.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m giving you another chance to step up, inspire your team and teach them the strategies you’ve been using for your mishaps.” ‘Mishaps’ was a strong word. Grif thought ‘brilliance’ fit better.

“Wait, so this whole ‘come-to-my-office-you’re-in-trouble-façade’ was just to tell me I’m a good soldier?” There had to be some sort of plot-twist. Maybe Sarge would appear out of nowhere to shoot him with his shotgun.

“No,” Kimball replied incredibly flatly and adjusted some papers on the table. “When it comes to shooting targets, general stamina and overall willingness of a soldier, your comrades beat you by far. But we need an infiltration team, and, as strange as it is to say, I think you are our best shot.”

“Huh.” Grif thought about a proper response, and then he realized he had none. He had not exactly planned for this. “Huh.”

Kimball had to be smiling behind her helmet. Grif could feel it. It was creepy. “That is if you are willing to take another shot at this. It would seem that Bitters have changed his mind about this situation.”

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” While fiddling with the armrest of his chair, he thought about what all this meant. “Wait, does this mean I’m not stuck at dish duty?”

“Not a chance,” Kimball replied with missing a beat. “I’ll inform them you’ll stand ready at the kitchen the next week.”

Grif sighed. “A man can hope.”

Kimball chuckled slightly before asking, “So will you be the one to deliver the news to your team?”

“Actually,” he said, and the word visibly surprised her. He pointed at the wheelchair that was somehow still supporting his weight. “I kinda need to deliver something first. This thing fucking squeaks. It’s driving me crazy.”

* * *

Later that day.

“But- but what about the armory storage we were going to organize?” Simmons stuttered, actually following Matthews a couple of steps before he realized how wrong it was for a Captain to chase a Lieutenant like this. Grif snorted at the sight at he slowly made his way towards the maroon soldier. His leg was still sore, mainly stiff from the lack of use, but the wheelchair was no longer of use. Mainly because it was no longer usable. Hopefully, Grey had other chairs.

Matthews failed at sounding complexly apologetic since the news of Grif keeping his title made him too happy. “I’m really sorry, sir, but Captain Grif ordered me to practice my sneaking skills. I have to go now before the kitchen serves all the tacos!” And so he ran off to steal Grif’s extra lunch.

“But we could sort the bullets after size!” Simmons called out. “Or, or alphabetically!”

“Stop being pathetic, Simmons,” Grif told him and grinned. “Oh, wait, isn’t that a paradox?”

Simmons turned his head to stare daggers through his visor. “You’re sucking the joy out of my life.”

Grif sighed happily. “And everything is as it should be.”

“I can help you organize, sir!” Jensen told him as she walked past him, a happy bounce in her steps. Why she was so happy, Simmons could not understand, but he gave her a sad nod which she accepted with a smile and continued her way down the hall.

Sighing, Simmons noticed a couple of gold-striped soldiers that were chatting happily as they strode down the hallway.

“Gold Team seems pretty be in high spirits.”

“Orange,” Grif corrected him automatically. “And yeah – they’re still running high after Kimball agreed to give us points for successfully apprehending everyone’s flag.”

“ _Point_. She gave you _one_ point. And dish duty service.”

“Meh,” Grif said and shrugged. “We’ll take it.”

“Your men were cheering. It was almost sad.”

“I actually think it was beautiful, Simmons. And delicious.” He rubbed his hands together at the thought of all the food they were going to secure (as a part of their training, of course – it was a valid excuse). “We are going to feast with tacos tonight.”

Bitters left the soldiers he was walking with to place himself next to the Captains. “Jewett and Parr have already secured the first five trays.”

“Good work, Bitters.”

“How is the needle project going?” Simmons asked him dryly. At least Kimball’s order for him to help the Lieutenant had been an empty threat, since the leader was quite pleased with how things worked out for the Gold Team.

“Great.” Bitters sounded a bit too sure of himself, so Simmons turned towards Grif.

“Kimball didn’t mention how we should put them back in one piece,” the orange Captain told him smugly.

“ _Grif_.”

Grif waved the hiss away and continued, “So Donut is making a new quilt. By tomorrow I’ll have my own special nap blanket. Bitters, find out Donut’s status on the Giant Flag of Maverickness.”

“Now?”

“No, fucking yesterday. Yes, I mean now, Bitters. And remember to bring extra ammunition tonight.”

Bitters tilted his head. “Are we talking about tennis balls again? ‘cause some of the others already stole the whole box in order to train their throwing arm.” That would explain why Simmons had seen numerous golden-striped soldiers walking around carrying balls.

“Then delegate shit and tell Matthews to bring extra.”

“Is this before or after I search for Donut? Because two orders qualify for in-between break. Your words. Sir.”

Grif used a second to take in Bitters’ attitude (he had used the s-word), but then decided to let it go. It was not like Bitters was actually mad or something. Grif knew what his anger felt like – pretty much like a bullet to the thigh. “Fine. Whatever. Just get it done before Donut expresses his creative skills and make a dress or something.”

Without saluting, Bitters turned around to shuffle away. Simmons watched him and his Captain in astonishment. “I don’t understand how you get anything done.”

“I don’t expect you to understand you to understand, Simmons. This is a thing between mavericks. And you’re a kissass – our natural enemy.” That earned him a snort. Grif hesitated slightly before raising his head, “Which reminds me – just why did _you_ suggest to Bitters that we should raid the mess hall? What – did you need some private time in our bedroom? ‘cause that sounds pretty dirty.”

“Shut up,” Simmons snapped and they both knew that he was blushing behind the visor. “Somebody needed to make sure you didn’t spend the rest of your life pouting. Besides, if you kept comfort eating, we’d all be starving soon.”

“Huh.” Grif hesitated slightly, before deciding to end the mystery once and for all. “So you didn’t put him up for this in order to send me to Grey?”

Simmons tried to scratch the back of his neck. “Could have been nice side effect, but… Well, going to therapy is something normal people would do. I don’t think you would qualify.”

“That is the smartest thing you’ve said all week,” Grif declared. “Hey, how about I go see Grey when you’ve begun your therapy.”

“Wha – I don’t need therapy.”

Grif rolled his eyes and wished that Simmons could see it. “Sure thing, Simmons. I am sure your head is completely fine. No issues at all.”

“What do you mean by that?” Simmons stuttered, arms crossed, and Grif was just about to say something that began with ‘father’ and ended with ‘issues’ when a loud crash sounded somewhere close to them.

Freezing on the spot, they both turned their head and waited in anticipation.

When the door finally opened, a fuming Agent Washington limped towards them.

And he was holding something yellow in his hand.

“ _Why_ are there tennis balls on every hallway from here to the mess hall?!”

Simmons tilted his head to whisper into Grif’s ear. “Remember when you said you were never going to run again? Because I have a feeling –“

“Fuck you, Simmons!” Grif called out, already a few meters away, yelling over his shoulder as he tried his best to outrun the limping Washington. “Fuck you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my original plan, Bitters and Grif was going to invade an enemy base. Then I realized there was no fucking way they could do that on their own, so I made them do something just as dramatic but less dangerous. Well, they risked Carolina’s anger and that’s pretty dangerous if you ask me. Also, in one version, they actually managed to burn the flag. And the entire equipment closet. It was glorious. But then I realized Kimball probably wouldn’t promote Grif after wasting their few supplies, so the closet lived.
> 
> Also, the chapter became so long. But I never felt like I could end it somewhere, since this is the last chapter, so I hope you enjoyed all of it.
> 
> Special thanks to ShadyJane who has been such an awesome friend! She supported this story from the moment I showed her the first sentence, and she is probably the reason I actually ended up writing RvB fics to begin with! So super giant shout-out to her! Tak, min ven – your support means everything!
> 
> So sorry for the wait! I’ve been busy with other unpublished stories – new Grimmons fic is coming up, along with several one-shots – and school has been a killer. Also, someone tell my computer to stop being a bitch and deleting my shit again and again! *stares angrily at computer* Yes, I’m talking about you. Please explain to my readers why you decided to delete 800 words at three different occasions?! Bitch computer.
> 
> And I was stupid enough to buy Skyrim Remastered and now I have to tear myself away from the game in order to write. Which reminds me that I really should update my Skyrim fic soon. Sigh. Too many stories. Expect an update for Seeing Red next!
> 
> Thank you so much for all your support! This is the fic that started it all and it feels weird to end it. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have!

**Author's Note:**

> General info note: English is not my native language, and I apologize for the grammar mistakes that I didn’t catch. Also, I am horrible at spotting typos, so please forgive me.
> 
> Also; wanna see my random RvB doodles and musings, as well as very small grimmons ficlets and my weird thoughts in general? I’m riathedreamer on tumblr. More info on my AO3 profile.


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